FLOWER POWER

Many like flowers because of the perfume or colour. Glass flowers don’t smell. Well unless you have burnt flesh on them as they are made! I make glass flowers, loads and am more interested in their shape instead of colour. Mind you I do make a mean red rose. Actually, to be precise I make glass rose buds and roses. Love to play around with colours so that a green rose with red leaves offers a touch of confusion to the viewer. At the moment I am busy making tons of glass daffodils. I may colour some yellow but being drawn to do a few red daffs. Its for an exhibition all about spring and newness. So that the daffodils are rising like a flame emerging form the ashes of Covid. More about my glass flowers.

I’m not sure if thistles are widely appreciated as flowers. I have made 100s over the last 40 years. Mostly clear but have used various lustres such as purple and green. This is most useful when the glass thistles are to be used for holding and burning candles. The colours will not be damaged by heat. Whereas if one used colours which are painted on then when the glass becomes hot the colours go black and emit a very off putting smell. I have made white thistles before but only because I had a lot of white glass going spare. Some people thought I was making a statement with using a prickly item such as a thistle in a symbolic peaceful manner. I have made thistles with so called wrong colours o0n such as purple leaves and green tops. Also, with red leaves and yellow leaves. At the end of the day its only colours and some get very upset if the colour of a flower is not as nature intended.

When making glass flowers its always useful to think about how will they be displayed and I have made many vases of differing designs. The simplest is just a glass tube sealed to a base which has been spun whilst hot to form a circle of glass similar to the base of a wine glass. I have made a group of flowers as if planted in a flower pot. I did this to enter the local county show in the arts category. I was convinced I would win as my glass skills are surely superior to knitting. I had of course underestimated the number of entrants and the fact that the judge didn’t appreciate lamp working glass against other art forms. Oh well the glass floral arrangement found favour with the WRI as a raffle prize.

Recently I have been enjoying planting glass flowers in the riverbank outside my studio. Here the more flowers the better and especially if the flowers are all similar the effect can look dramatic. I have made about 3o daffodils, planted them and stood back to watch those walking pass be surprised and wonder what was going on.

Size I suppose is important and I have made wedding favours as flowers resembling the bride bouquet. I prefer to work on a larger scale as it can be too fiddly working with miniatures. Especially if one is making up to 100 favours. Far too time consuming which no one will be will to pay for. To colour them alone takes more time to actually make the glass items.

Fantasy flowers are great to make since no one can say they don’t look like the real thing. There is no reality, only imaginations. My tulip making always offers me to deviate onto weird and wonderful shapes. I was asked to make some full-size glass birds of paradise flowers which I thought I would have fun with and add birds on the leaves. Needless to say, the customer didn’t see the joke.

I made a glass daffodil with a vase for a colleague in an office I used to work in. Every time this colleague was away on business or holidays, I would take the daffodil out and join another 3 or 4 CMS of glass on the stem. He could never understand on his return how his flower had grown. You gotta talk to glass flowers as well as real ones but don’t shout please.

Roses seem to be popular for gifts to couple celebrating anniversaries and I have made gold and silver roses. The gold is a lustre which can look dull at times if not controlled whereas the silver colour is made using platinum lustre. Again this can look too metallic and I can never understand why people are just happy with clear glass.

I went through a stage of making dead flowers which I thought a good investment since dead flowers last forever whereas living flowers have a use by date. Best of all is sealing real flowers inside a glass tube either under a vacuum or just at atmospheric pressure. I surprised myself in sealing a red rose in a glass tube to see it change colour form red to yellow. That was nearly 30 years ago and its still in my studio untouched by human hands. Science or art I have no idea what can explain this but looks cool.