Order And Chaos / April 23, 2024 by Sasha Ward

I made the big, square panel above recently. It combines one of my melted pieces of slab glass with a lovely piece of old window glass. The small bubbles and wobbles in the large clear section don’t show up in the photo, likewise many of the textures in the coloured glass surrounding it. Handling a big glass panel with the hole I had cut in it was tricky, so was inserting the central piece of glass (with a lead wrapped around it) into the hole. The front is very neat, so is the back but it is copper foiled.

Left, tracing paper removed giving a better idea of the textures in the glass. Right, detail of the top section.

Left, colour selection from my scrap box. Right, on the light box, cutting the scraps to a plan.

The design followed on from the shapes of the glass scraps I chose for the border, with colours getting darker towards the edges and harmonising rather than jarring with each other. At one stage, I was going to paint in a loose style over these border pieces, but then my desire for order got the upper hand and I made a plan (below) that returned the composition to a geometric framework, with straight lines and right angles.

As I planned the painting stage, I tested each type of glass I had used in the composition by firing it in the kiln with splashes of enamel, oxide and silver stain. The pieces looked great all together, so I spent a happy evening leading the sample pieces together (below) in a panel that returns the glass scraps to a jumble of chaos.

An Insertion / February 7, 2024 by Sasha Ward

My 1978 diary records me learning how to cut a hole in a piece of glass - ‘an insertion’. Because I have a tendency to keep everything, I found the 1978 insertion in my glass racks (above) and was surprised to find how close to the edges of the background glass I got as I smashed and nibbled my way to the perimeter of the circle.

Large piece of glass showing the bashing and removal stages during the cutting of an irregular shaped hole in it.

These days, I use a drill or order a piece of glass already drilled with holes. I have been known to sandblast through the glass to start a hole off, but decided to return to the old school method to cut a big hole for a chunky glass insertion with an irregular shape. The method goes like this - first score and open up two circuits; then cover the centre with crisscrossed lines; then start bashing from underneath the glass; then start removing squares of glass with the notches of an old fashioned glass cutter; finally remove the edge pieces with glass pliers.

Left: hole in glass, Right: piece of glass to be inserted in it.

Handling glass and finding out how much it is willing to do for you is satisfying. It was actually harder cutting small holes in thin glass to make the central panels of glass sketches that explored some ideas. Should the colour of the glass extend beyond the circular lead line (above right) or be contained by a thick lead line (below right) ? Should I combine black painting with enamels on the coloured glass strips (below) or should I introduce sandblasting in lines that ignore the leading (above) ? It’s hard to decide these things on paper, but the little glass sketch often provides the answer.

Tree patterns / December 12, 2023 by Sasha Ward

As you can probably tell, I made the panel above by leading together glass pieces from two different styles of work, both based on trees. I happened to have the two painted pieces of glass shown below in a pile on my work bench and had a feeling they would go together well. The finished panel also uses other pieces of glass from the same two series as I fitted the two patterns together in the best and most treelike way.

Tree patterns, left from the *Theme and Variations* series 2020, right sample from front door window 2023.

The original background tree pattern, the tops of four windows for a private house, 2018.

The coloured tree pattern is one I invented to show a woodland scene (I don’t think I stole it from anywhere) for a commission that I never got a great photo of, the one above was taken in my studio window before installing it. I then made a series of panels that were deliberately a cross between a design and a colour sample (below). Three years later I made the black and white trees pieces as samples for a front door commission where I tried out different blacks and greys as well as different methods for making the foliage patterns.

Some of the samples for a black and white front door commission 2023.

With my leftover pieces I made a second and opposite combination panel (below) where the coloured pieces float across the black and white sample like patches of light in a woodland scene. I’m able to chop these pieces up into complex shapes and then lead them together because it is the right type of glass - i.e. 2 to 4 mm thick whereas most of my work from the past thirty or so years has been made of glass at least 6mm thick and often toughened or laminated, as are many of my samples. These are not commissioned pieces and it’s a wonderful novelty for me not to have to get a beautifully drawn design agreed by a client before starting the making stage. The downside of this spontaneous way of working is that I don’t see mistakes (in the design) until the glass is cut, leaded and soldered so I have to pull the panel apart and change things, aiming for the sort of perfection that happens very occasionally.

Scrap Glass / February 23, 2023 by Sasha Ward

Left, palette with unfired enamel paint. Right, glass scraps painted with two enamel colours and fired.

For a recent commission I had to make a lot of colour samples using transparent glass enamel mixed with a drop of lavender oil and another of gum arabic in the traditional way. With the leftover paint I coated rectangles of glass with two colours against each other and once fired, saved them in a box. The next stage, cutting them up then leading them together to make something satisfactory, proved harder than I thought.

Scraps cut up and arranged to make scrap panels 1, 2 and 3.

My first idea was to make exuberant curved shapes with background pieces cut on the slant (scrap panel 1 above and below). The offcuts from the slanted pieces made an effortless triangle panel (scrap panel 2 above & below). I shouldn’t have been surprised that panel no 2 was so much better than panel no 1, as I wasn’t trying too hard - always a recipe for disaster. There was too much yellow in no 1, so panel no 3 (above right) was an attempt to deal with the yellow by making it the spine of the piece and using the colours in a more ordered way.

Scrap panels completed, top panels 1 & 2. Bottom panels 3 & 4.

The original format of panel no 3 looked very clumsy, so I cut it down to make a smaller panel no 3 (above right). Finally, to emphasise the original idea of the two enamel colours coming together on one piece, like a simple flag or landscape design, I made panel panel no 4 (above left) where the bands of complimentary colours frame other painted and sandblasted scraps from one of my many boxes of broken glass and sample pieces.

Bathroom Doors / November 30, 2022 by Sasha Ward

Colour samples, screen printed and hand painted enamels.

When I meet a new client, I usually have the three glass samples shown above in my bag. I have made hundreds of these over the years as I experiment with the colour and texture of overlapping stripes of vitreous enamel and iron oxide on clear glass, but these three are somehow the best and most admired. On the latest occasion my client liked the samples so much that she wanted a design for the glass panels in two bathroom doors based on the idea of the colour sample.

Once I’d worked out the best proportions for the horizontal and vertical bands on the tall thin door panels, I set to work on new sets of colour samples using an etched, therefore transluscent rather than transparent, glass. One set was based on a golden colour range, the other set needed to coordinate with the bathroom’s terracotta tiled walls and floor. It’s hard mixing transparent glass enamels to match a colour, particularly in the warm orange range where things easily go towards brown - as you can see in the nine samples for this project in my studio window (above right). As much as the amounts of each powdered enamel you put in the mix, the result is affected by how you apply the enamel, in this case I hand painted (as opposed to printing or spraying) to achieve the textures in the original favourite samples.

On the table (below left) you can see the glass on my lightbox with the vertical stripes fired on and the samples I’m trying to match above them. The finished panels (below right) show the second layer of horizontal bands in a contrasting but paler colour range of greys, greens and some blue.

Left, half done panels on the table. Right, two finished panels in the studio.

The panels are finished and installed before the rest of the rooms are ready - so fingers crossed for their safety while work goes on around them. Both sets of colours are good, not exactly the same as the samples of course, with some unexpected mixes and welcome blemishes. The best aspect of the painting is that I have kept the layers light and thin which is a good glass painting tip - it’s easier to add than to remove.