White Ice Gallery 1

In glassmaking you generally build outwards from centre, taking a first gather, then a second gather and so on, until you have gathered enough glass to form the intended object. This layering, often described to be like the layers in an onion, allows the glass maker to manipulate each layer prior to any further gathering . Here we see the mica particles ‘retained’ under a layer of clear glass.

We start with a gather from the furnace, at temperatures over 1100C. This is centred on the blowing iron and then rolled across chips of mica, a silicate mineral.

Once this begins to cool and harden a separate gather is dropped over centrally, creating a sealed form. Here we see Master Glassmaker, Pete Smith of ‘Top Glass’ illustrating this process on our behalf.

This is gathered over again straight from the furnace and moulded; the neck is then cut into the desired shape whilst the main body is heated and cooled until the end can be held with metal shears.

Using large shears the hot glass is pulled out and bent to form the characteristic curved shape . When complete the ‘ice Spike’ is annealed , put in a separate oven or lehr, to cool down slowly to remove all internal stresses.