animal beads

Creating small sculptures in glass is an interesting challenge.

elephants and friends, click to see all

The molten glass is like taffy or honey and tends to leave strings of itself behind.  You melt an initial blob to be the body, then dab on another blob at the hip, and watching carefully, pull slowly, drawing out a string of the proper thickness to form a leg, bending it into a leg shape, and then melt the excess away at the foot.  Later as you are working on another leg, you must take care to not accidentally melt the first leg, or melt off the tail.  It is wise to work on the biggest body parts first and leave the tiny extremities for the last.

Here are some of my baby steps in this arena; a black horse, a green hummingbird, and a trio of elephants.  These are not for sale, they are just kindergarten doodles.

To see the work of master glass sculptor Pino Signoretto, and learn about his life, check out this in depth interview at the Nautica website.

“Furthermore, glass itself has something to do with the sea, in effect, to make the magic happen you need four ingredients: sand, water, air and fire, to which I would add a fifth element which is the physical energy which the artist needs to use to shape glass.”  ~  Pino Signoretto