Amazing oversized indoor outdoor charcuterie platter!

I am making large well really large cheese boards – they are 80cms long – You need to come and collect this fabulous art glass cheese board directly from my studio.  Let me share with you some of the design process in creating this awesome art glass platter.

I start by creating the shape and size I want in newspaper.

 

then I cut the basic shape out of 6mm clear glass, giant leaf first cuts.

I use old fashioned tools to cut the glass, an oil filled cutter, running pliers and grozing pliers…because leaves are subject to bugs and the extremes of weather, no leaf can be without little cut out bits around its edge….

so here is a close up of the sort of cut outs I create that imitate the nibbles that you can often see on the edges of eucalyptus leaves.

 

So after I have worked on getting the glass to exactly the shape I want I start to prepare my kiln and fill it with casting plaster which I purchase in very big bags.  I need to always make sure everything is perfectly flat on the kiln floor – this is a miniature spirit level.  (interestingly, loads of people leave the spirit levels inside the kiln during firings, you should see the mess it makes!

 

 

which I carefully level out and create the “mold” I need for my glass piece.  When the mold is ready I will grind all of the edges of the glass piece including the “cut outs”.  My glass grinder “bits” look like this.  In another post I’ll explain how they are made and how they work.

 

and wash and dry it thoroughly and place it on the “mold”.  The glass will be thoroughly cleaned and dried, and I will check that it is level before turning the kiln on…then its ready for its firing.

 

I have experimented dozens of times to achieve the exact outcome I want for my glass pieces and so I programme my kiln accordingly….then pray to the kiln Gods that it works.

 

Here are the customers with the first platter I made, you can see how big it is here….

 

You can see that the edge is soft and yet multidimensional. I hope you found my “step-by-step” process of how I make probably the worlds biggest glass cheese board!

Here is a picture of my smaller (50cm long) Cheese Board that I made recently.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this post, feel free to share it if you’d like.   If you’d like a Giant Leaf Cheese Board – please remember that we only make 8 of these per year and we’ll be making more during our summer.

I hope you enjoyed reading about how I create each of my Amazing oversized indoor outdoor charcuterie platters!