Topic: Twists glass Edinburgh paperweights

[Frank]

Two weights made by Mike Hunter in his well attended demo at the conference may be offered in the near future... and I am also sure we will get some good pics of the demo up soon too.

[Wuff]

First of all I would like to congratulate Frank on this event. With the help of Shiona Airlie and the helpful people at the Edinburgh College of Art a great event was realised - with many interesting lectures and several demonstrations at the ECA glass studio.

In his first demo Mike produced two paperweights, the first being a millefiori closepack. Here is a selection of images from this demo - in two parts, as only 4 images per post are allowed.

[Wuff]

... continued ...

[Wuff]

Mike then used the left over glass from the first weight for a second one, by "painting" stems and leaves on the surface with thin green rods; in a second step millefiori canes were added as flowers.

[Wuff]

... continued ...

[chopin-liszt]

 :clap:

Your pictures are far better than mine, Wuff (it was lovely to meet you there   )

Mike moved every time I hit the button (so did Alistair Macintosh), so my pictures were all taken late - the irritating thing about digital cameras is they're only good for stills!
I eventually gave up   because I was missing seeing what was happening.

What I didn't miss, was noticing that when he got his kitchen chopper out on it, and started dividing the two weights in the middle of the bundle of canes, THAT was when the dome-shape of the cane pack appeared in the clear crystal he'd put over them.

He then trimmed the residue of the canes in the clear glass off, leaving himself with just the blue glass on the punty ready to make the next weight.

Given he'd pulled all the stops out to put the best possible mix of unusual canes into the close-pack, I couldn't help thinking the bit he'd trimmed off should have gone into the annealling oven - I'm sure somebody would have loved it as an oddity!

[Lustrousstone]

And his assistant is Mrs Sue Hunter. This was a good example of thinking on your feet, as Mike had planned something completely different but the big torch thingy (not sure what the fuel was) he was planning to use decided that it wasn't working at weekends. The blue bit wasn't supposed to be left over! The glass is full lead crystal. I'll see if I have anything worth adding later.

[Wuff]

Sorry, if my wording was not quite clear: the blue glass was "left over" from the first weight - not to be thrown away, it was planned to be used for a second one (fortunately a replacement torch was organised, when the planned equipment wouldn't work).

[Lustrousstone]

I understood that the first weight was to use the blue glass and the closepack and that he had to change what he was doing almost completely, or am I confused (as usual)?

[Wuff]

Well - to me it looked he did what he had planned to (apart from the change in equipment): the green rods and millefiori for the flowers (already brought to temperature in the annealing oven) didn't just "happen to be around" - this type of weight for the second part of the demo seems to have been planned.