I wanted to make some other animals, but crows don’t look good in clear, so I made swans instead.

This is what I made in my first day of borosilicate class. Borosilicate glass is a lot like soft glass, except that it’s more tolerant of heat variations. The disadvantage is that it’s more expensive. I made fish because they’re symmetrical, so they’re easy, and they have a lot of fins, so I could practice joints, but the fins can be almost any size and shape, so it’s hard to get it wrong. Everything is clear because I had to order colored glass and it took a while to get there.

These are very small: no more than two and a half inches long and about an inch wide.

This is the last of the posts from hotshop unless I can take the class again this autumn.  The next posts are going to be of the things I made in borosilicate class, punctuated by my new little books.

This is my first paperweight. It has an odd shape because I didn’t use the paperweight block.

To do this sort of thing in hot shop, with a crucible kiln and gloryhole, takes maybe ten minutes.  To do it with rods and a torch would take forever.

I’ve made a whole series of these in different colors. I meant to use them, but when I take one down from the windowsill, the others don’t look right.