Blue bride in India, a very special order
When she saw this piece she loved it, well almost all of it. So she decided to design her own bespoke present to give the bride on her wedding day. It makes me happy to be able to create something special for such an occasion! She wanted two strips of iridized clear glass and no white strip.
She needed it by a certain date as she was flying to India to be a part of the wedding party & was going to give the piece to her friend, on her wedding day. What an honor to make such a gift. I am sharing with you the process here. The original work is called “Blue Harmony” and the new work is called “Blue Bride”….just in case you’d like one made for yourself.
I wonder where you can imagine this in your home?
The first thing I do is to cut the base white glass from a sheet that measures 61cms x 1220cms (that’s the size I buy them). The finished piece will be 35cms x 20cms.
Then I cut the transparent blue the same size.
When working with glass it is always important that it is perfectly clean and dry and free from oil or finger marks. I wash each and every piece in warm soapy water, rinse it and dry it immediately with newspaper. Should any tiny specs of newspaper ever be left on the glass, fortunately, if would fire off in the kiln.
Then I add some strips of iridized glass. Here’s a brief YouTube video to explain iridized glass to you – I hope you enjoy it.
I determine which side is the iridized side by scratching it gently with my fingernail (gel nails don’t allow you to do this I discovered once in a class recently). The iridized side fired up gives a highly coloured finish but also a crinkly uneven surface, like a sun dried tomato skin…I don’t like the texture much. If you fire iridized side down it gives you slightly less of the sparkling iridized coloured effect, but it maintains the glossy surface that’s in keeping with the rest of the piece.
Then I lay down the prepared strips of clear glass with white stringers, that I usually make for my works called River Marne together with two separate stringers.
(I prepare these strips by laying clear glass on graph paper and gluing white stringers on the top. The glass is then tack fused and cut into 2cm strips.)
River Marne by Jenie Yolland
(It is fortunate that not all items used to make glass art are terribly expensive.) Here’s the piece as it went into the kiln.
and after a full fuse, which takes the glass up to a top temperature of 766 degrees C and then slumped into a ceramic mold at only 600 degrees C. Here it is
It is usually difficult to photograph iridized glass, here are some other photos of the work before it went off to India to be given to a lovely bride as her wedding gift from a close friend.
For more of my glass please email me. This design is called BLUE BRIDE IN INDIA.
