Art Glass Bowl with Hand Painted Tesserae 12″

$249.00

This bowl is part of our Serendipity Collection of art glass home decor. It is 12″ x 12″.
We hope you enjoy this absolutely one-of-a-kind art glass piece. Making it was almost as much as looking at it!

Creating it was a 6-step process.
Selecting the Glass: The inspiration for this piece came when I found a stack of large, clear glass sushi plates at an estate sale and thought, “I can make something with those!”
Flattening the Glass: Normally, fused glass projects start with flat pieces of glass. In this case all my glass was curved, so the first task was to flatten it. Fortunately, that was an easy fix. One at a time, the sushi plates went into the kiln and were heated to 1250 degrees, the temperature at which glass softens but doesn’t melt. Left at that temperature for a while, the plates flattened out and rested flat on the kiln shelf.
Creating the Tesserae: Once flat, I painted the design you see on the finished dish onto one of the plates using special enamel glass paint. While it was still wet, I used a technique called sgraffito to reveal some of the clear glass under the paint. When the paint dried, I cut it into strips and then into tile-sized squares.
Applying the Surface Design: The tiles were carefully glued to another flattened plate, following the original design.
Fusing in the Kiln: The piece was placed in a kiln and heated to 1370 degrees, the temperature at which glass just begins to melt. At this temperature, known as a tack fuse, the pieces of glass stick together but retain their shape.
Shaping the Dish: At this point the glass was still flat. To create the dish shape, it went back into the kiln one more time, this time on top of a mold, and was heated to 1250 degrees. At this temperature the glass softened and gravity caused it to sink into the mold and assume its final shape.

Additional information

Weight 3.5 lbs
Dimensions 14 × 14 × 4 in