I just finished a four-day workshop with Fritz Dreisbach, one of the people who helped start the studio glass movement in the US. Besides being incredibly knowledgeable about glass (he’s been blowing glass for over 50 years, after all), Fritz is just a great human being. People like Fritz, who are willing to share their expertise and enjoy helping others in their quests to become better artists, make the glass blowing community a community to belong to.
This was an unusual workshop because we worked in both the hot shop and the cold shop. Fritz has developed a method of working where he creates colored ‘blanks’ or cups in the hot shop, anneals them, cold works them (primarily on a lathe), and then picks them up again in the hot shop to work them into finished pieces. (Lo rez pics below bc the final designs belong to Fritz.)
This technique has a couple advantages. First, you can really control the color in your piece. Although you can use powder for your cup blank, you will probably use solid color to build up one or two layers of color. This gives you a very even application of color, with a layer of clear on the inside. Second, you can now carve in your color, cutting through one of both of your color layers in the cup blank. You can be as free form or as geometric as you like, and you know more or less what your pattern is going to be (although it may distort depending upon how you blow out the piece). Finally, because you’re picking up your cup blank on another bubble of glass, it’s fairly easy to scale up the size of the piece. Want a smaller piece,? Pick up with a thin walled bubble. Want a larger piece? Use a really think walled bubble. The piece Fritz was working on ranged from about a foot in height to almost two feet.
It’s amazing how much you can cram into a four day workshop. I already know that this has changed the way I’m going to work going forward. I can’t wait to get back in the studio and get to work.