Mike and I started this blog to help inform glass lovers about the art therefore it’s time to educate those interested a little more. For most people who love art glass, glass lexicon can be challenging. Glass collectors and decorators trying to find the right words to describe a glass piece, or look may want to bookmark this blog because here I will try to list some of the words and techniques and an explanation. There are many words from A-Z, so I have decided to break the alphabet up into a couple of blog posts
Here we start with A-C
Cords - Flaws in the material, which affects the artist's ability to work with the glass.
Core Forming - The technique of forming a vessel by trailing or gathering molten glass around a core supported by a rod. After forming, the object is removed from the rod and annealed. After annealing, the core is removed by scraping.
Core - The form to which molten glass is applied in order to make a core formed vessel.
Cracking Off - The process of detaching a glass object from a blowpipe or punty.
Crackle Glass - To produce the crackle effect, the parison is rolled in moist sawdust or covered with sand in order to give the surface a coarse finished. It is then submerged in water, causing the surface to crack, without destroying the glass. A fresh layer of glass is then added and reheated until the cracks fuse together slightly so that the glass maintains its stability.
Crown glass - Window glass blown into a crown or hollow globe that is flattened and cut before use. Produced by reheating and spinning out a bow-shaped piece of glass (bullion) that causes the glass to extend into a flat disk by centrifugal force.
Art Glass - Generally, any ornamental glasswork made since the mid-19th century.
Batch - The mixed raw materials used in manufacturing glass that have been blended and proportionally mixed for delivery to the glass furnace.
Bending - A process whereby the shaped glass article still in sheet form is placed on a stainless steel, sheet steel or cast iron mold coated with talc or powdered chalk. The temperature is increased until the glass sheet sinks in to the mold.
Bits - Pieces of molten glass snipped off a blowpipe or punty rod and applied hot to a glass form.
Blank Mold - The metal mold in which the parison is formed.
Blank - Usually refers to a glass parison that is formed during the first step of glass molding. The piece is then transferred to a lamp worker or glass blower for final shape configuration.
Blister - A gaseous inclusion or bubble in the glass.
Blobbing - The technique of decorating hot glass by dropping onto the surface blobs of molten glass, usually of a different color or colors.
Block - A block of wood hollowed out to form a hemispherical recess. After it has been dipped in water to reduce charring and to create a "cushion" of steam, the block is used to form the gather into a sphere, prior to inflation.
Blowing - The technique of forming an object by inflating a glob of molten glass gathered on the end of the blowpipe. The gaffer blows through the tube, slightly inflating the glob, which is then manipulated into the required form by swinging it, rolling it on a marver, or shaping it with tools or in a mold; it is then inflated to the desired size.
Borosilicate Glass - A high silicate glass with at least 5% boron oxide.
Bubbles - A pocket of gas trapped in glass during manufacture.
Bullions - One of the few forms of flat glass still produced by the hand process. Cable - A pattern resembling the twisted strands of a rope.
Came - A grove strip of lead or (rarely) another metal, generally with an H shaped cross section, used to join separate parts of glass window.
Cane - A thin, monochrome rod, or a composite rod consisting of groups of rods of different colors, which are bundled together and fused to form a polychrome design.
Caning - The removal of glass from the surface of an object by means of handheld tools.
Casing - The application of a layer of glass over a layer of contrasting color. Cast Cast Glass - Glass produced by "casting', in other words by pouring molten glass into a mold or by heating glass already contained in the mold until the glass melts and assumes the shape of the mold.
Cerium Oxide - The oxide of the rare earth, cerium, used alone or together with other substances as a polishing agent for glass.
Cobalt - A silvery-white magnetic metallic element, which, even in small quantities, gives a strong blue coloration to glass. It can be used as a decolorizor on its own for opal glasses.
Cold Working - The collective term for the many techniques (such as engraving or cutting) used to alter or decorate glass when it is cold. Cords - Flaws in the material, which affects the artist's ability to work with the glass.
Core Forming - The technique of forming a vessel by trailing or gathering molten glass around a core supported by a rod. After forming, the object is removed from the rod and annealed. After annealing, the core is removed by scraping. Cracking Off - The process of detaching a glass object from a blowpipe or punty. Crackle Glass - To produce the crackle effect, the parison is rolled in moist sawdust or covered with sand in order to give the surface a coarse finished. It is then submerged in water, causing the surface to crack, without destroying the glass. A fresh layer of glass is then added and reheated until the cracks fuse together slightly so that the glass maintains its stability.
Crown glass - Window glass blown into a crown or hollow globe that is flattened and cut before use.
Find D-G on the next blog posting.
