Tag Archives: Glass art

Grisaille

The grisaille, in painting, is a pictorial technique synonymous with chiaroscuro, or chiaroscuro, as Vasari specifies it. It uses only shades of the same color to imitate marble, stone, bronze (fifteenth century). It is similar, by this principle, to the monochrome, in its variant with several tones of the same color. It has often been used to prepare, sketch, prefigure a final painting (like sinopia). It is also used in the stained glass technique, in gray, by adding metal oxides before firing the glass. A grisaille is a painting executed entirely in shades of grey or of another neutral greyish colour. It is particularly used in large decorative schemes in imitation of sculpture. Many grisailles include a slightly wider colour range, like the Andrea del Sarto fresco illustrated. Paintings executed in brown are referred to as brunaille, and paintings executed in green are called verdaille. A grisaille may be executed…

Glass applique

Dalle de verre, is a glass art technique that uses pieces of coloured glass set in a matrix of concrete and epoxy resin or other supporting material. Glass applique, is an applique technique that is frequently used in glass art, whether or not in combination with glass fusing. The method is often used to decorate large glass surfaces or to give a certain figuration, while the representation and the wall remain transparent. Technique The technique was developed by Jean Gaudin in Paris in the 1930s. Slabs of coloured glass, 20 centimetres (7.9 in) to 30 centimetres (12 in) square or rectangular and typically up to 3 centimetres (1.2 in) thick, are shaped by breaking with a hammer or cutting with a saw. The edges of the resulting pieces may be chipped or faceted to increase the refraction and reflection effects. The forms of glass that have been accurately cut out…

Came glasswork

Came glasswork are windows in which the individual flat glass pieces are framed by U- and H-shaped lead rods and soldered together along the edges. Before it was possible to produce larger glass surfaces, rung and lead glass windows were the only way to glaze larger wall openings. Today they are mainly realized as artistic works. Despite the similarity of names, lead glass is not used in lead glass windows. Came glasswork is the process of joining cut pieces of art glass through the use of came strips or foil into picturesque designs in a framework of soldered metal. Final products include a wide range of glasswork, including stained glass and lead light pieces. Came is made of different metals, such as lead, zinc, brass and copper. The metal came selected generally depends upon the size, complexity and weight of the project. As an alternative to came, copper foil may…

Glass art

Glass art refers to individual works of art that are substantially or wholly made of glass. It ranges in size from monumental works and installation pieces, to wall hangings and windows, to works of art made in studios and factories, including glass jewelry and tableware. As a decorative and functional medium, glass was extensively developed in Egypt and Assyria. Invented by the Phoenicians, was brought to the fore by the Romans. In the Middle Ages, the builders of the great Norman and Gothic cathedrals of Europe took the art of glass to new heights with the use of stained glass windows as a major architectural and decorative element. Glass from Murano, in the Venetian Lagoon, (also known as Venetian glass) is the result of hundreds of years of refinement and invention. Murano is still held as the birthplace of modern glass art. The turn of the 19th century was the…

Studio glass

Studio glass is the modern use of glass as an artistic medium to produce sculptures or three-dimensional artworks. The glass objects created are intended to make a sculptural or decorative statement. Their prices may range from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands of dollars (US). For the largest installations, the prices are in the millions. During the early 20th-century (before the early 1960s), contemporary glass art was generally made by teams of factory workers, taking glass from furnaces containing a thousand or more pounds. This form of glass art, of which Tiffany and Steuben in the U.S., Gallé in France and Hoya Crystal in Japan, Royal Leerdam Crystal in the Netherlands and Orrefors and Kosta Boda in Sweden are perhaps the best known, grew out of the factory system in which all glass objects were hand or mold blown by teams. Modern glass studios use a great variety of…

Mosque lamp

Mosque lamps of glass, enamelled and often with gilding, survive in considerable numbers from the Islamic art of the Middle Ages, especially the 13th and 14th centuries, with Cairo in Egypt and Aleppo and Damascus in Syria the most important centres of production. They are oil lamps, usually with a large round bulbous body rising to a narrower waist, above which the top section is flared. There is usually a foot so they can be placed on a surface, but they were normally used suspended by chains that went through a number of loops on the outside of the body. They were used to light mosques and other buildings in mosque complexes, in large spaces in groups hanging from a circular metal frame. The circular frames continue to be used in many mosques today, but with plain or frosted glass lamps for electric lighting. Manufacture The techniques used are typical…