Stained Glass Patterns and Tips from GlassSorcery.com

I love these stained glass versions of a d20 (20-sided dice) used by gamers for table top role playing games. This gives me yet another project to add to my list.

I have made little sea shell and sand pyramids (will post photo soon,) but now I want to try making d20s or some other size of die. At least I won’t have to worry about filling it with sand and shells before I finish soldering.

Looks like the numbers on the three dimensional dice are made from solder on copper foil overlays. Maybe the numbers could be painted on?

clipped from purplepawn.com

The popular board game podcast, The Spiel, featured a unique piece of art in this week’s episode: stained glass D20’s (20 sided dice).  While only tangentially related to gaming (as they definitely can’t be rolled more than once), these items are so gorgeous that they deserve further mention.

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Recently I have been looking for a rose window frame to make a rose window.

There used to be a company in Oregon called the Rose Window Company that made sets of various styles of rose window frames for artists and hobbyists to use to make rose windows. I have been trying to locate therm with no success. I guess they have gone out of business.

While searching for information on the Rose Window Company I came across Mezalick Design Studio. They have an interesting article with great photos about a restoration they performed on a Tiffany Rose Window in a church in Germantown in Philadelphia, PA.

They also have a very detailed and interesting article on the history of stained glass. I have added a link to this article on our History and Museums page.

Oh, and if anyone has any information on the whereabouts or status of the Rose Window Company, or if you know of any other company that sells rose window frames, please leave me a comment. Thanks- Gwen

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Last week we brought out a new page filled with links to stained glass tutorials. One of the artists whose tutorials are listed there is Ichiro Tashiro. Mr. Tashiro is a self-taught, outstanding stained glass artist. He opened a stained glass studio in Japan in 1978.

The Tashiro Stained & Leaded Glass Studio website has a 500-photograph slide show and five galleries with excellent photographs of Mr. Tashiro’s exquisite and meticulously crafted works of art. His work is very precise and highly detailed. As he notes in his profile, some of the pieces of glass he works with are smaller than grains of rice.

I particularly like his stained glass light boxes shown in Gallery 3, especially the little birds and the momji (autumn leaves.) If you like lamps, be sure to visit the third of the eight slide shows; it has exquisite lamps. Some of the lamps are adorned with butterflies that appear so realistic you will expect them to spread their wings and flutter away. The slide shows take a little time to load, but they are well worth the wait.
Mr. Tashiro has included four technical sections on his site containing detailed descriptions and photos of his method, which were included in our guide to tutorials.

I highly recommend a visit to Ichiro Tashiro’s website.

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I have RobertOddy.com bookmarked in my stained glass artists section in the folder entitled “Simply Amazing.” I have been a fan since I first saw his work.

Bob Oddy is a frequent/regular contributor to Glass Patterns Quarterly, which means that you can obtain some of his patterns along with his instructions on creating one of these masterpieces from that publication.

Bob Oddy is best known for the illusion of depth he creates in his work by plating multiple layers of glass. He also incorporates bark and carved wood into some of his work.

Bob Oddy is self-taught. Because he wasn’t taught what “can’t be done,” he often does the un-doable, to great effect. For example, his first stained glass panel “Bamboo,” diverges significantly from the standard, accepted methods of stained glass construction.

As Jim Matthews writes,

. . .the moon gets its shape from multiple glass pieces — but they are unattached, not leaded or foiled together. Oddy carefully ground the pieces to diminish shiny edges, then butted them together to create invisible seams. . .

For the full article see “Artist Profile: Robert N. Oddy,” by Jim Matthews, The Score, Issue No. 60, Sept 15, 1997.

Visit Bob Oddy’s website to view his gallery of works and read his collection of articles, some of which include descriptions of the techniques he uses in his exceptional works of glass art.

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Remember my post a few days ago about a book on decorative soldering? It was called Solder Magic Book: Instructions and Patterns
I just received my class catalog for the Glass Craft & Bead Expo and I found that the author of that book, Kay Bain-Weiner, will be one of the instructors there and has been an instructor at this event since it began 12 years ago.
At the 2007 Glass Expo she will be teaching three classes: Contemporary Glass Enameling, Solder Sculpturing Fantasy Art, and Creative Designing. Visit the class listings at the Glass Expo website to read details about these and other great classes.

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I came across a book on decorative soldering entitled Solder Magic Book: Instructions and Patterns by Kay Bain Weiner that sounded interesting.

I looked the book up on Amazon and I found it has two reviews: one review rated it two out of five stars and the other rated it five out of five stars. Neither review was very helpful. the 2-star review just said that there wasn’t much information in the book and you could find it all online, while the 5-star review was just a quote right out of the introduction to the book. (You can read the same thing when you use Amazon’s “search inside” tool.) This didn’t seem very promising, however, the author was just named recipient of the 2006 Art Glass Association Lifetime Achievement Award. Hopefully, that says something for her abilities as a teacher.

Ms. Weiner has written several other how-to books on art glass techniques. For more information see her website. http://kaybainweiner.com/KBW/

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Looking for decorative soldering tutorials? I found a website today that has just that: Glass Desires Decorative Soldering.

It is a very nicely designed website with the links for various areas cleverly represented as books.  The black slider bar (if you are using Internet Explorer) is a bit hard to use.  (If you are viewing with Firefox it shows up normally.)

The site also has tutorials on embossed brass, hammered brass, pearls (one form of decorative solder,) and foiling.
The artist, Candace Reimer. has some very nice pictures of her work, including some refreshingly different Pacific Northwest Indian art designs.

This may inspire me to create some Pacific Northwest patterns for my free pattern section.

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Just when you think you are gaining some expertise and ability in crafting stained glass art, you find a site like Stephen Bonesteel’s and realize how much more there is to learn.
 
Stephen Bonesteel’s work is like nothing else. You can feel the wind as the cars race by, hear the whine of the engines, and see the dust flying. Amazing! It is hard to believe that this is stained glass.

While I hate red type on black background (so hard to read,) the pictures of these stained glass auto racing scenes are awesome. The cars depicted include Ferrari Lotus Duesenberg, and various Indy and Formula 1 cars.  He even did a window of a Clark Gable Duesenberg. Most of the windows are 3′ by 5′ and most were commisioned. At least one was for sale last time I checked: a great 3′ by 5′ window of Jeff Gordon winning the inaugural running of the Brickyard 400 in 1994 is priced at $6,000.

You don’t want to miss this if you are an auto racing fan. Imagine having one of these one-of-a-kind windows in your home! However, even if automobile racing is not one of your interests, if you are an aspiring stained glass artist, or just interested in seeing how versatile stained glass can be, you should really check out Stephen Bonesteel Race Glass. 

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Here are a couple of great sites with stained glass mirrors.
The Glass Tardis has some unique mirrors including a dragon mirror, a frog mirror, a tiger mirror, various flower mirrors, etc. I enjoy their creativity and originality. The store is located in West Yorkshire.

Visit The Glass Tardis here.

Another great site with mirrors is Contois Reynolds. They make “handmade contemporary stained glass wall mirrors, glass suncatchers, Tiffany windows & handcrafted jewelry.” I particularly enjoy their Royal Dragon mirror and their Jeweled Dragon mirror located in their Fantasy Art Mirror section. Their Southwestern mirrors feature wolf, bear, and buffalo. They have an Astronomy mirror collection that includes a particularly nice moon mirror and a Saturn mirror.

Visit Contois Reynolds here.

Both of the above sites sell their finished products, though The Glass Tardis only accepts orders for panels from within West Yorkshire. For those who are stained glass artists, both sites are a source of inspiration.

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