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A while back (must be nearly 2 years) I was making a multi media piece which incorporated glass, wood & bronze. I promised Morganica among other people that I would post a picture when it was completed. It has now been installed in a sculpture exhibition in NZ called NZSoS (New Zealand Sculpture onShore).
Originally it had a bunch of glass fruit cast as one piece. I was not happy with it & attempted to refire it with disastrous results. The glass components have now all been cast separately.
Here it is:
You can see many more images on my Facebook page.
Cheers,
Ron
First I'll tell you about the disastrous refiring of the bunch of fruit.
It was done in Bullseye cranberry. After coldworking the piece I was not happy with the excessive amount of bubbles (half bubbles) on the surface of the glass withe many more below the surface. If I coldworked the surface ones off, more would appear so I resolved to refire it in an attempt to eliminate as may of these as possible. After filling the surface bubbles with wax, I reinvested the glass & refired with a long soak at 830c
(16hrs) Unfortunately on the downwards ramp, the mould cracked & leaked half the contents over the kiln floor. This wouldn't have been so bad if I could have reclaimed most of it, remade the piece & topped up with new glass to replace that which was lost.
Unfortunately Bullseye cranberry is a striker & on the second firing it had gone liverish so no hope of using any of it again especially for a third firing.
With the new work I made each banana as a separate unit so I was able to use Bullseye amber on two of them & Gaffer orange red for the other two.
To eliminate bubbles I cast these horizontally in open faced moulds & carved off the excess glass after firing.
The results were much more pleasing.
I'll make another post to give the specs of thework.
Cheers,
Ron
Here are the specs. of Gondwana Banana:
Height: 2500mm
Width: 500mm
Materials:
Glass: Leaf bud: Bullseye casting billet amber 3.8kg
Banana x 2: Bullseye casting billet amber 3.6kg each
Banana x 2: Gaffer lead crystal orange red 5.1kg each
Total glass: 21.2kg
Wooden pole: jarrah (Australian hardwood) 1670 x 180 x 180 36kg
Silicon Bronze
Crown: 950 x 500 x 500 17kg
Roots: 950 x 450 x 450 17.5kg
Total bronze: 34.5kg
Cheers,
Ron
