Mouth Blown Glass Sheet

The traditional way to make coloured glass for stained glass artists to use is by blowing it, first into a bubble which is elongated by swinging it, then cutting the ends off to make a cylinder which is cut down the middle and then flattened into a sheet. These stages are shown in illustrations from different eras of glassmaking above and below.

When I started making stained glass windows you could buy sheets of glass known as ‘antique glass’ (because it was made by the antique mouth blowing method) made in Sunderland by Hartley Wood and Company. However Hartley Woods closed in 1997 and we started buying glass that was made in mainly Germany, France, America or Poland. When the company English Antique Glass stopped blowing sheet glass in 2022 ‘mouth blown sheet glass making’ was declared to be extinct in the UK by the Heritage Crafts Red List, where stained glass is listed as a still viable craft.

Eliot Walker and assistant Ryan working in the hot glass workshop at Blowfish Glass, Stourbridge.

On a mission to change this situation, the glassblower Eliot Walker (with Blowfish Glass) has started blowing sheet for stained glass on the site of the Red House Glass Cone in Stourbridge’s historic glass quarter. He learnt the tricks of the trade at Fremont Glass in Seattle, using a method suitable for small scale production. I took these photos (above and below) on a recent visitors’ day demonstration, a mesmerising watch that I would recommend to anyone.

The stages of turning a glass bubble into a cylinder.

The most fascinating part is not the blowing but the turning of the cylinder into the sheet - a process I will never describe in that airy way again when people ask me how the coloured glass I use is made. The cylinder was cold when it was cut (above right), Eliot then had to carry it with his tongs to the hot kiln, where the glass leaped around in a strange spiral before settling down (below left) and then being smoothed (bashed down rather) with a damp stick. The glass sheets that are made by this process are smooth and even, around 3mm thick, but contain beautiful colours and markings (below).

Left: The cylinder is flattened in the kiln. Right: six blown glass sheets on the Blowfish Gallery wall.

A box of offcuts: Left, as blown. Right, after flattening in my kiln (& with other coloured glass scraps added).

I’ve been adding antique glass into my smaller scale work recently, and have been running out of the streakies in my glass scrap boxes. So I bought a box of offcuts at Blowfish Glass that were the pieces from the slot that was cut down the middle or from the neck or base of the cylinder. The glass is easy to cut and mostly flashed (meaning the colours are in layers that can be removed) so will be ideal for sandblasting and maybe painting.

Two new pieces: Piece One, Piece Two

Before putting them away I couldn’t resist trying out a few pieces in combination with other glasses. I made four small pieces with an offcut in each one as follows:

Piece One: When I put the orange/green streaky next to a plain pale purple the combination was electric. Grey round the edge for a calming border.

Piece Two: The most lovely piece of cylinder neck glass - how would the streaky colours look next to black or white glass in comparison to the grey that I often use?

Piece Three: A panel that needed a border, miraculous colours that enhance the original piece.

Piece Four: This one was made to look like a window. The chunky glass from the cylinder bottom becomes a piece of sky or landscape next to the detailed painting that I did for an example panel.

Two old pieces with new glass added: Piece Three, Piece Four

Clouds and Planes

Left: My first commission 1979, 790 × 860 mm. Right: from 1978, 650 mm sq.

Following on from the last post about my first commission (shown above left) I have been searching through my old work. I made the three pieces above & below at The Central School of Art to the dimensions of windows in my parents’ house in Wimbledon in front of which these all used to hang. Initially I thought I could reuse the glass for the restoration of my first ever commission, but there were no exact colour matches. Then I started to quite like the pieces and decided to save them as they are, unpainted and with great colour combinations in beautiful glass made by Hartley Woods.

Left: from 1978, 520 × 750 mm. Right: from 1979, 520 × 350 mm.

Looking also at my sketchbooks from the time, I found a thread which started with drawings of the sky, with aeroplanes and clouds. My first attempt at this subject matter (above right) fits into the worst category of cloud - solid and static with a badly painted aeroplane. I remembered another panel and although I could only find the drawings that related to it (below left), this one was definitely better, with pink and yellow glass and drippy bits of painting on the clouds which are starting to move in a diagonal direction.

Sketchbook pages, Left: 1979, Right: 1983

Clouds and aeroplanes are scattered across the things I’ve made ever since; clouds recently and aeroplanes more when I had the ambition to reflect the modern world in my work, an ambition that has gradually been bashed out of me during the process of getting commissioned. For example, this is from a recent brief for a public commission:

Due to the context of the area, some elements should be avoided, including: Bright, harsh, or jarring colours. Strong cultural or religious symbols. People, animals, or potentially triggering flowers. Confronting, busy, or clinical/medical imagery. Bodies of water including lakes, rivers and seas. Vehicles/machinery. Text, inspirational quotes.

Parts of pages from 1984 sketchbook

I found two aeroplane panels among my stack of old stained glass. I had a feeling there were once three, but I could just be remembering the drawings, as the one with the tick next to it only had two planes (above left). I’d later made them into patchworked panels having chopped off the corners where fixing holes had been drilled. This time I kept all the original pieces I could find and leaded them up as a way of keeping the pieces together. I particularly liked the backgrounds to these designs, on the diagonal to give a feeling of the expanse of the sky scape, with plain diamond clouds behind the planes and then the pattern changing as it spreads above and below them. I had never chucked my geometric backgrounds out with the vehicles and machinery, and had a go this week (shown at the bottom) at using the pattern again in black and white with a cloudy tree top standing in for the original flying machines .

Panels made in 1984, then cut up, now leaded together again.

silk purse, sow's ear

Although it is true that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, I really don’t believe in the concept that this proverb expresses especially when applied to the making of stained glass. I’ve always used old scraps of glass - scratched, industrial, too thick or too thin - to paint on. I use old jars of powdered enamel that people have given me and ancient pots of iron oxide that I don’t spend hours grinding down (as I was advised when studying). I use these same materials when I run glass workshops, most recently for Arts Together in five different venues in Wiltshire, previously described on my blog here and here. So I’m not being critical of other people’s work when I describe the process of making a stained glass panel out of their painted scraps of glass in terms of the silk purse and the sow’s ear, but I feel as if this is what I have done with the discarded bits from the workshop sessions (above).

This small panel is a nice reminder for me of the project and the people who made the pieces, which were mostly samples to try out the painting techniques. It is also a reverse of the participants panels, which go from a dark centre to a bright and light border, as it spirals from a dark edge to a clear centre. I’ve laid out the group members’ finished panels below, all 71 of them, categorised mostly by subject matter.

Order And Chaos

Towards Order 740 x 740 mm

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.

The painting and sandblasting plan.

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.

Towards Chaos 300 x 240 mm

Tree patterns

Combination Trees 350 x 350 mm.

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.

Theme and variations 2020

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.

The Opposite Combination 375 x 360 mm.