Making a Murano glass leaf

I just returned from visiting my glass factories in Italy and I thought I would shed a little light on part of the hand made, mouth blown, magical process of making glass objects.  I will do a couple of postings of other processes I find fascinating.  I hope this gives a renewed interest in the fascinating world of hand made, mouth blown glass.  I believe it is a little bit of magic and passion in our high tech world.

The molten glass is poured into a metal leaf form or shape.  This form will stop the now liquid glass from running all over and this will keep the thickness at the authentic voluptuous level.

The molten glass is scored to make the leaf veins.

The form is removed and the leaf is examined and begins the process of being curved.

The molten leaf is slid onto the warmed form.

The leaf will stay for a very short time here before it goes into to oven so that it can cool slowly, avoiding any cracks.

The finished piece.

I hope you find this as amazing as I do.  I have been working in the factories for longer then I would like to say and it never gets old.

TFC NEW PLACEMATS

Here are a few of our newest additions to the Thomas Fuchs Creative collection and an entirely new departure from 3D objects.  It has been an amazing experience to work with our new manufacture and the exciting new material of glass beads.  As you may know by seeing my previous designs, in glass, wood, metal, etc., I love texture.  I am just getting my feet wet but soon you will see a lot more in an array of beaded placemats utilizing the depth and texture (and COLOR) you can get from this new medium for me.

These will all be available at Barneys New York in early Fall. 

Photograph be David Diesing

http://www.daviddiesing.com/