Bohemia glass fused with garnets

[Janet McFadyen]

My neighbours collected antiques for many years, lots of nice glass items and hand tools, they ran an antique shop for a few years out of their home....They invited me in to see some of their treasures after visiting my gallery today, I saw some very rare pottery and glass including a Fenton plate that was outstanding ( I haven't researched it to see if it is a Fenton) and a Czech Bohemian plate, they purchased in the Czech Republic, it has Bohemia garnets sandwiched between 2 layers of clear glass, one of those layers has a dotted square pattern texture. The glass appears to be quickly contour fused as the edge shows both layers of glass. The garnets have quite a lot of air around them, although they look like there may be cracks starting...I could not find any obvious stress, no actual cracks that I could see when I held it up to the sunlight...the Bohemia glass plate (5") is about 10 years old ( 2005). I just thought it was interesting and wanted to share. Janet

. Sorry I have tried 4-5 times to insert the photos (copy and paste)...if some one could help me I would appreciate it. I am using an iPad thanks

[Buttercup]

Hi Janet, down below the text box where you type your post are two tabs. One says Options the other says Attachments. Select attachments and you'll be given two ways to add pics, either by dragging and dropping them or a field to click which says " Add files ". Either way the most convenient way is to have the pics ready on your desktop. You can either drag and drop them , not copy and paste, or click "Add files' which will give you the route to select them and open them which, in a Mac anyway, drops them below your message. Hope that helps, Jen.

[Janet McFadyen]

Thanks Jen it still will not allow them to load. The wg site says it's in my privacy settings, I can't add wg to the list for some reason. Thanks for the suggestions, I will try to get help here later to it figure out. I have emailed them to a wg friend hopefully he will be able to help, I find this piece really interesting and would love to have a discussion going. Janet

[Kevin Midgley]

Here's Janet's plate.

[Morganica]

Nope, still can't see it...or is it just me?

[Marty]

Cynthia- it's you.





(I can't see it either)

[Brad Walker]

Janet,

Kevin sent me your photo. It's 1.4 MB, the largest photo we can handle is 400KB. It was also a tiff file, jpgs work much better.

I have converted the file to .jpg format and reformatted it for viewing on the internet. It's below.

[Janet McFadyen]

Thanks Brad and Kevin thanks for the help

[Bert Weiss]

Take a look at the glass using a polarizer. Obviously the garnets shrink close to or more than glass.

[Marty]

Frit. Not garnets.

IMHO

[Janet McFadyen]

Bert yes that would be the best way to be positive there is no stress.

I posted on fused glass.org (Paul Tarlow) on facebook, when I couldn't post photos here , anyway below is my fb posted theory why it has stayed together for at least 10 years.

Here's my theory on how it was made and why it works. Although hard to see in the photos the garnets appear to be faceted, so I do believe these knowledgeable antique dealers when they tell me the red bits are garnets,being tiny and with the air bubbles, it allows the sandwiched fusing to take place even though they are not compatible. How I think it was done is they just allow the 2 layers of glass to "kiss fuse" ( I just made up that term). Lots of air surrounding the garnets... You can see where it appears some garnets have moved... The spiral gets a bit narrow and the wider in one area. The Czechs are masters with glass, it's anybodies guess what melting point glass they used.

Josh Schneider wrote on the fb thread : these panels may have been used by passing the layup through two segments of a lehr tunnel, rather than fusing it in a kiln the way we would. be a stupid easy way to mass produce them... not that i believe that'd decrease their value, if anything, i feel like the thought that goes into simplifying and speeding up industrial art makes it more valuable...

[Marty]

Frit. Not garnets.

IMHO

...because they look sort of melted. I can't see facets at that resolution.

[Bert Weiss]

regardless of whether they are frit or stones, the spiral is a naturally good shape to get a decent bubble squeeze on any level of tack fuse.

I know that some sands contract more than glass (silica sand) and some less (olivine sand), so it wouldn't totally surprise me if garnets contract more.