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Silver Birches Surrey
Hills Landscape 2011
This window is 2650mm x 1500 mm so a lot of glass!
Each of the panels is encapsulated into sealed
units with the additional protection and energy
saving Argon filling and a soft coat which is
applied to the inside of the house side piece
of toughened glass. These units are made up of
2 pieces of 4mm toughened glass with the stained
glass sandwiched in the middle.
In the winter of 2010 my customer visited me
to discuss a project they were just embarking
on. A beautiful new house they were building made
of green oak and set on a plot in Reigate, Surrey.
She has always wanted some stained glass and when
part of the planning required they have an obscured
window, it was felt that this was the ideal time
to investigate the possibility of this. Luckily
she found me and we immediately 'clicked'. I listened
to her requirements and took notes and it seemed
as if I were meant to make this window for her.
Some months later I came up with a design which
essentially is the one I made with a few tweaks
here and there. My customer even came in for a
few hours to help create some of the fused pieces
of glass in the foreground.
The design depicts the gentle rolling Surrey
Hills with Silver Birch trees. I initially started
designing with oak trees but this felt too obvious
and so I changed to silver birches. This has allowed
me to use this wonderful white streaky opal glass
for the trunks of the trees and this works brilliantly
at night too as with face light the glow. I have
included a nod to the wonderful oak in the top
right hand corner of the middle panel!
The glass is cut in a rich mixture of textures
and colours all of which successfully enhance
and are sympathetic to, the oak within the building.
Nothing too garish or bright and plenty of soft
tones. In the foreground I have included some
of my signature pieces of fused natural elements,
grasses and seed heads fused and cast in to the
glass. I have used a vanilla and a powder blue
opalescent glass powder to create some of these
images and this also will show up well at night
with face light. Making sure that not the whole
of the window is a black hole!
The silver birch leaves are painted enamels,
fired in the kiln. It took me ages to find just
the right translucent enamel for the leaves and
one that stays more or less the same colour which
ever colour glass it is painted onto!
I've cut the window using a lot of mouth blown
antique glass mixed with some lovely machine made
glasses. There are some beautiful piece of mouth
blown glass purchased from The
English Antique Glass Company, fitting for
a home made in England by Oakwrights.
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