Stained Glass
Lilies and Fish
The cartoon is taped onto the wall for the design to be approved.
This lily flower is system 96 fused glass.
These blue pieces were broken, hand-blown pieces made flat in the kiln.
The image on the left shows the fish without copper plating. This wavy clear glass is iridescent adding to the effect. On the right is the image after copper plating.
This detail view shows the copper frame and the fused lily flower and pad.
The full panel after installation.
This recent commission was created for a beautiful house on the St Lawrence River. The techniques to create this were glass fusing, lead came construction, malleable copper sheet wrapping of glass edges, all typical of my usual work. In addition to the previous techniques, I used two new processes. The first process involved using broken pieces from hand blown vessels to create unique flat glass pieces by flattening the broken pieces using my kiln. The second process created the illusion of fish and animals in the water. I painted the images on the back of these glass sections and fired them in the kiln to make them permanent. To create the illusion, I plated copper behind those pieces. This makes the fish flash as you move by just like they do when you see them in real life. Animals under water are very hard to see for more than a moment, I was trying to replicate this and think it was pretty successful. The design was inspired by rowing the St Lawrence River, both myself and the client spend many hours rowing the river. The panel was framed with hand made copper pieces created specifically for this project. It was a wonderful project and I plan to make a few smaller panels similar to this one.