“What Type of Glass Art is That?”

What types of glass art are available at Mountain Made?

Since Mountain Made is a participant in the Summer of Glass, we thought we should take the time to answer two of the most commonly asked questions we get about our glass art, “What type of glass is that?”and “How is that type of glass art made?”

Basically all types of handcrafted glass art falls into three main categories: Hot, Warm or Cold glass.

Hot Glass

According to the experts “Artwork made from ‘hot glass’ includes blown glass, solid sculpted glass, and cast glass. Basically, hot glass working involves molten glass with a temperature around 2000° degrees.”

This hot molten glass is used in what is considered traditional glass blowing, sculpting, and casting shapes into molds.

Mountain Made’s hot glass blower is Terri Sigler, who creates wonderful blown glass and cast artwork like the items below from her studio furnace.

….

Warm Glass

This type of glass art involves heating glass in an oven or kiln. Warm glass art can be categorized into either slumping and fused glass.

Slumping or slumped glass usually involves heating a flat glass plate or sheet glass to a temperature above 1250 degrees.

This is just hot enough for the glass to start to bend or slump down due to gravity. Typically the glass is placed on top of a heat resistant mold and is formed during the ‘slumping’ process.

Kiln formed or fused glass is created when different pieces of glass are heated to the point where they fuse or melt together.

The temperature needed to melt or fuse glass is much hotter than that for slumping and creates a different look, although glass slumping and fusing are often done at the time.

….

Cold Glass

This type of artwork can be created when the glass that is not hot. Cold glass art includes acid etched glass and sandblasted glass as well as stained glass and mosaics.

Stained and Mosaic glass art are two of the oldest ways of working with glass. The glass is never heated during the entire process.

With stained glass, each piece is hand cut and then ground to fit inside a pattern. Then the artist foils and then solders the glass pieces together to form a rigid framework.

With mosaic glass art, fragments of glass are artistically arranged on a underlying bowl, and then grout is applied over the top and in between each piece to keep all the glass fragments in place.

….

Now there are two other types of glass art which are very popular but deserve to have separate categories of their own.

Lampworked Glass

Lampworking is the process of using a torch or open flame to heat and bend glass rods into artistic shapes and scultpures.

Prefabricated glass tubes and rods are used for lampworking. The technique of lampworking is used to make jewelry, beads, small ornaments and figurines. Lampworking creates high temperatures so the artist can easily manipulate the glass without cracking it.

This is how many contemporary glass artwork is made.

Scientific Glassblowing

Scientific Glassblowing originally started out as the process of creating glass apparatus and glassware systems used in research and production.

But this seemly “boring” glassblowing process has been recreated by wonderful artist such as our won Jason Probstein, to transform ordinary Pyrex glass tubing into some of the most popular art pieces in the area.