Boro Sculpture!

Here's some pictures of my first two attempts at doing sculpture work with borosilicate glass (think Pyrex). This type of glass is Very different to work with than the soft/Bullseye glass I use to make little fusing bits. It's very slow to move and heat up, which can be both a blessing & a curse. Plus there's the fact that it doesn't want to shock as it cools down much (or at least not as much of a tendency to do so than soft glass does - found that out yesterday, yikes!)

Because it is such a hard, sturdy glass (and some of the other properties above) make it ideal for things such as bakeware, large items, and sculptural, multi-piece things. (Can we say wine glasses, wine corkers, etc?)To give some perspective, this vase-thing on a stand is 7.75" tall. The flower hits 4.5" tall.

Now, these two items I can't sell at all - they both developed some hairline cracks in their assembly/final cooling so their structural intregredity isn't the best. However, they're quite pretty to look at, and are a fun preview for the types of things that could be done with this material. :)

Oh, did I mention the colors?? Boro has such a larger range of colors and color effects that you can get with it than soft glass, it's just amazing and fun to play with. Take a look at the root-like base of this flower - that's all one color of glass, and it just happened to hit all those various colors.