An Exploration of a Spider Web in Fused Glass 2006

Inspiration for this piece came from my love of the intricacies in natural found objects, places and their form.

Using kiln forming techniques of glass fusing and slumping I made each separate piece before leading them together.
The idea was for a cobweb on a rusty gate to evoke a secret garden that no one has been in for years. on dewy mornings or when the sun glints from the glass it looks magical.

It was displayed for a while at a local flower shop and is now a permanent feature of my garden.

In October 2005 I bought a couple of rusty gates on eBay, perfect, and set about designing my fused glass cobweb.

I wanted to use both lead and glass in this piece to show the diversity of application glass work affords. The whole piece took about 3 weeks to complete as the firing cycles are very long, 14/16 hours.

Included in the fused pieces is some dichroic glass. Dichroic glass was first manufactured for the aerospace industry and is made in a vacuum, spraying on a thin film of oxides and metals. The wonderful properties of dichroic are that if on clear glass as used in this piece it displays one colour when looked through and another with reflected light.

This space age technology is another fantastic string to the warn glass artists bow! -and in the cobweb really makes it sparkle as if on a dewy morning. It could also be seen equally as if it were made of ice.