The pieces are made by first coating a gather of glass with black powdered glass on a blowing iron, this is then cased with a layer of clear glass, another piece of glass is coated with a clear, high lead content, powdered glass and a few chips of a colour called aurora, this is then wrapped around the gather and manipulated to form the pattern, the trail of glass is pushed into the gather so the surface becomes smooth and is then blown up, puntied and hand finished, then the glass is blasted with a gas torch, the trail of lead glass goes shiny and the chips of glass which form the striations when stretched and wrapped around the gather become obvious, it is then sprayed with a solution of stannous chloride with leaves a thin layer of metal on the surface of the glass, the amount sprayed on changes the colour from blue to gold to pink. There is no real gold in these pieces, Chris and myself did work at IoW Glass, Chris set up Shetland Glass when the workers were layed off for three months after christmas during the recession in the 90's.