Wednesday 26 November 2008

Getting A Reaction

A few weekends ago, I ran glass fusing taster day at the Long Eaton Art Room.

It was a lovely day, and everybody seemed to have a great time. And they were a very productive bunch!

I went over to the Art room to see the work when it first came out of the kiln (I do wonder if that excitement will ever wear off, the feeling I get when I open a kiln to see the results!) - there was some fabulous work, but I was particularly intrigued by a couple of pieces that looked as though one colour had been outlined against another,

I'm sure lamp-workers will already know about these things, but I only really knew about striking and reducing, so off I went to do a bit of research.

Apparently it all depends on what is the glass - but if a glass containing say, copper added, is next to a colour with sulphur added, a reaction will occur and that reaction causes a colour change. Here's a piece I tried, using different colours that I knew should react:



The bottom piece was light cyan, the middle is vanilla and the frit on top is turquoise, all opal Bullseye glass.

I am pleased that the reaction occurred with both colour borders and it is something I would like to investigate a lot further (ha ha, when I have time!) - in combining more colours that should react to see what effects I can achieve.

2 comments:

ChatElaine said...

OOOwww nice reaction, lovely Dawn!!

Steve said...

Copper and sulphur can be combined to to make copper I sulphide, which can be yellow, red or brown, and copper II sulphide, which can be black or blue-black.

I can imagine other colours with other metals if you can get them in glass.