Catherine Cheek

I made this the same day I made the clear glass fish. It cracked in a few places. Oops. Forgot to keep it consistently heated. Guess even borosilicate has limits. It’s about four inches long and two and a half inches tall.

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 …

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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.