Cupola

A client has recently purchased a house built in the early 1920’s.  It contains a cupola that has become ugly over the years through exposure to nicotine and general dirtiness.

Rather than trying to clean it, the client has decided to replace it with something in keeping with the period of construction that will allow light through into the hallway, but also obscure the view of the roof.

After trying out several ideas, I came up with one that I liked and developed it.

In my enthusiasm for the flow of the piece, I overlooked the desire for roses that the client had expressed.  The client gently pointed this out to me when I showed the design.  Oops, time for a re-think.  Everyone agreed that the flow of the green forms, although not rose leaves was desirable.  You can see the beginnings of a re-design on the original.

So I came up with a variation.  I worked on making a simple but clearly rose shape instead of the elongated buds that were the colourful feature of the first design.  I also worked to bring more of the colour lower into the panels.

You can get a better impression with the new design over laid on the old.

This is now at the glass cutting stage and soon to move to the building of the panels.

Float Glass Experiments

I have been conducting some recent experiments with float glass strips.  The intention was to play with devitrification.  

I placed the strips randomly tin or air side down.  In the first they were shingled, and then fused. In the second, they were shaped first then fused.  The first went into a self-made ceramic mould.  

Assembled strips fused and formed

Strips bent and assembled before fusing and forming

The second I decided to make into a large tray.  The mould for this, as I had no suitable mould of the correct size, became cut kiln shelves arranged in a parallogram and covered with thinfire.  

"Free form" mould assembled on sand bed

I fired at 100C per hour and watched periodically from 600C top 720C.  I decided to stop the firing after 10 minutes at 720C.  This was not an entirely successful experiment, as only a little devitrification shows on the first and none on the second tray.  Still, I obtained two interesting vessels, which encourages me to continue the experimentation.

Lansdowne Church

Just recently I along with others, was given access to Lansdowne Church, Glasgow by a group of photographers interested in the future of the building. It is one of two spires along Great Western Road, a major road from the city centre to the west. The building has a good architectural heritage - Mackintosh was later a member of the Honeyman practice. From my standpoint, the greatest interest are the surviving windows of Alf Webster.

However there are other windows of interest too. So before cleaning up my pictures of the Webster windows still installed, I would like to show some of the other windows. The church because of its orientation has no East Window, and so in unusual. The West window, over the (now disused) entrance to the church faces onto the River Kelvin and so is open with no buildings to diminish the light. It is a very formal affair, possibly installed at the time of building, and does not take advantage of the amount of light that is available in the evenings.

As you can see it has a lot of formal grisaille with three figures.

On the left is Moses

In the centre Christ

And I am sure someone will tell me who this is on the right.

These are windows typical of the period just before the aesthetic movement began about 1870. Formal decorative elements with little narrative or drama are typical of the period.

Public installations

Although I am new to the process of blogging, I have been involved with glass for quite a while as you can see from my CV posted earlier.

It seems appropriate to indicate some of the larger public installations that I have completed.

This one, entitled "Don't Rain on My Parade" is one of a series installed in a cocktail bar originally entitled Bloody Mary's but because of a legal dispute has been renamed with an anagram of the original title. It is made from a combination of fused glass and brass shim. This is located in Glasgow's trendy West End.

Another project which was much less intimate in scale was for the Glasgow City Parks Department. This piece is 4 metres high. The subject matter was determined by the Parks Department. The steel frame was made to my design, after the specifications for the whole installation were decided. This picture shows it installed at the Hampton Palace Garden Show with water flowing toward the viewer. It was later installed at the Glasgow Garden Show and is now permanently installed in Queens' Park, Glasgow.

This pair of panels was made for the Glasgow University staff bar. Is there a theme here about watering holes? The University decided to close the staff bar and use the space for lecture rooms. You would never think this could happen in Calvinistic Scotland, would you? I removed these panels just before the renovations were begun to make sure they were not damaged. They are pictured here before they were returned to the University and installed in light boxes.