Chihuly Glass

So the last posting covered the creation of a simple vase, but what of Chihuly.

Dale Chihuly is a real master of art glass. He ended up teaching at the college where he studied, because he was the one advancing the concepts. His work is exhibited worldwide and he undertakes commissions for corporations, museums and wealthy individuals.

He was blinded in one eye, ironically by glass, but a rather less beautiful piece of windscreen glass, when he was in a traffic accident in the UK, but he still designs and oversees the creation and installation of his work.


He does make some small pieces, either as awards and presentation pieces, or simply to sell to thise who can't spend hundreds of thousands on a chandelier or persian ceiling. Unfortunately even these small pieces cost a few thousand pounds.


Seeing a few of the small bits here was the first time since we started travelling that I wished I still earned money, as I really think I would have set aside my usual spend limits and bought a piece. Instead I just spent a long time admiring it and took a lot of photos!

But the majority of his work is anything but small. The photos here show some large pieces, but they are not nearly on the scale as some of his external installations.

The process that we saw just uses the free blowing method of blowing rolling, and waving the glass around to give it it's shape, with just simple tools used to shape an edge if needed. But another method makes use of moulds and more complex tools to form the glass into more complicated shapes. This method is used a lot by the Chihuly team.

Teams of people are needed for the large pieces, which can be well over twice a person's height. Some will hold and blow the piece from the top of a scaffold, with others twisting the hot glass around moulds, and still others use huge blowtorches to keep the glass at the necessary 1000 degrees centigrade.

Between the creation, transportation and installation of these incredible and delicate pieces, the breakage rate can be around seventy percent. No wonder it is expensive.

His chandeliers are enormous creations of twisting, cornucopias of coloured glass that throw light and shadow across the walls as well as looking amazing themselves.

He will cover a whole wall in his beautiful persians, which look like huge delicate flowers.



Or there are his persian ceilings, which are a glass ceiling filled with varying sizes, shapes and colours of his glass creations.  It is a simple enough idea, but the effect is stunning.  The best way to look at it is to lie down, so I took a photo by putting the camara on the floor with a timer to take the picture.




Then there are his boats...




... and his mixed installations that incorporate his stem like fioras, the sperical nijumas and other pieces, so look like some kind of wild forest growing up out of a mirrored base.

As you may have worked out, I love this glass. So don't tell Nic, but should Dale ever read this, take pity on me and send me a piece for when we have a home again, I would have to consider stopping travelling just so I have somewhere to put it!

Hot Glass

One of the reasons that we picked St Pete as a place to visit was that it has a permanent exhibition of Chihuly glass.  I do like glassware and I especially like the Chihuly glass.  So while in St Pete we went along to both the exhibit, and to a Hot Glass demonstration of glass blowing of a more regular nature. 

Although we did them the other way around, I will tell you about the Hot Glass first as it put some of the Chihuly stuff into better context for us once we realised the time and cost involved in making just a relatively simple piece of glassware.

We watched them blow a medium sized, two coloured vase, and it took two people about half an hour.  They have to make multiple trips to both the crucible, which is a furnace containing the molten glass, and the glory hole, which is the furnace that they use to keep the glass hot enough, as well as heating separate sticks of coloured glass to add to give the second colour. 

Great care is taken to get the shaping right, both by rolling the piece on a work surface and by shaping it in their hand using a large wedge of sodden newspaper to contain the immense heat of around 1000 degrees centigrade that the glass has to be kept at.

 

And the furnaces have to be kept at this temperature all day, everyday, so the vast majority of the cost of hand made glassware is actually fuel to fire the furnaces.

Despite the name, and for the thick and heavy style of vase being made here there is very little actual blowing done, just a little here and there as the glass is built up and the colour added.

The main decorative shaping of the vase was done by swinging and turning the vase, to make the neck flare out in a wavy manner. And suddenly there was an almost finished vase.

We never got to see the final product, as it had to go into the third furnace, the annealer, to be cooled down slowly.  Apparently the colours would have been blue and a bright green.