Stack Firing for Embedded Imagery
This TipSheet will introduce you to methods to drift imagery and coloration inside thick blocks of clear glass. Traditionally, thick glass castings have resulted from pours of furnace glass or by kiln-casting glass chunks or frit. The tactic we name “stack firing” outcomes, as an alternative, from the fusing of a number of layers of clear sheet glass on that are imbedded traces and fields of coloured glass. This methodology is direct, easy, and permits higher management of line high quality than is achievable with different methods. The reader is assumed to have a primary data of glass fusing strategies.
The first technical challenges concerned on this working methodology are: 1) Controlling trapped air (bubbles), 2) Restraining the glass stream at full fusing temperatures, 3) Working with prolonged heating and cooling cycles, 4) Minimizing coldworking to the completed mission.
Origins and Evolution of the Methodology
As with most methods that develop at Bullseye, the strategies we are going to describe developed from an artist mission on the Bullseye manufacturing unit. Italian artist Silvia Levenson was commissioned to supply a collection of enormous glass blocks for a fountain in Northbrook, Illinois. The intensive tools and expertise required that Levenson have interaction the providers of Bullseye’s Analysis & Schooling division to supply the work. We, in flip, requested Ray Ahlgren* to develop a technique and oversee the manufacturing of the fountain blocks. After the Northbrook mission, we scaled down these strategies and included them as segments of our starting and intermediate kilnforming lessons. This TipSheet will lead you thru two variations of stack firing: Single-Fired Stack and Double-Fired Stack.
