Hunt Scene on Blue Steel Glass – 10″

This piece is part of our Horses collection of equestrian home decor. It is 10″ in diameter.

This one-of-a-kind piece owes its gorgeous color palette to the distinctive glass from which it’s made.”Steel Blue” glass is named for an unusual characteristic: when subjected directly to the kiln’s heat without a protective covering of glass over it, it undergoes a striking transformation from shiny blue to matte grey, a phenomenon initially deemed a manufacturing error but embraced by artists for its creative potential. Not surprisingly, it is now one of the manufacturer’s most popular colors. This sophisticated piece of equestrian art promises to generate compliments whether displayed in your home or gifted to a lucky recipient.

Creating the piece was a 4-step process.
Glass Selection: Two pieces of glass were cut to the finished panel dimensions, one steel blue and one clear.
Creating the Image: The design was created using a process called “powder printing”. Using a stencil created on my Glowforge laser cutter, finely ground clear glass (known as powder frit) was sifted onto the blue glass. It covered the riders, horses, and dogs and continued to the bottom of the circle. When the stencil was removed, small chips of opaque turquoise glass were carefully fitted around the riders and their hounds, gradually increasing in size and density as they got further away. To create a channel for a band of transparent glass to flow horizontally across the top of the piece, the blue glass was cut into two pieces. After cutting, the blue glass was placed on top of the clear layer, leaving a gap which was filled with transparent frit. The big blue dots on either side of the channel were created by chunks of clear coarse frit that melted down into the blue glass when it was fired. The color of the top half of the piece is the result of layering clear frit in varying thicknesses. Where it was thickest, the glass remained blue. Where it was thin or nonexistent, we see a grey background.
Firing in the Kiln: When all was assembled, the two layers of glass and the frit on top, were placed in an electric kiln and heated to 1475 degrees, the temperature at which glass melts and the layers fused together. in the kiln and