Lampwork Glass

Lampwork Glass

Glass Vocabulary: glassmaking techniques and other vocabulary A to Z – Part 2

Dichromatic glass: Glass which shows different colors when seen with either transmitted or reflected light.

 

Drops: Blobs of glass applied for decoration or to facilitate holding. Alternatively, this word could mean cut glass ornaments or lusters hung from chandeliers.

 

Enamels: Finely powdered glass and metallic oxides mixed with substances such as oil, and painted onto glass and subsequently fired.

 

Engraving: The decorative incision of the surface by use of wheels or of diamond or sharp-pointed tools to make linear or dotted designs.

 

Etching: matting or removing a surface of glass by exposure to hydrofluoric acid or its derivatives.

 

Facon de Venise: Venetian style glass imitated throughout Europe.

 

Filigree: (Italian: "thread-grained") A decorative technique of embedding and twisting white and colored threads within the clear metal.

 

Finial: Ornamental/ functional knob of various forms surmounting a decorative object or vessel.

 

Flameworking: also known as lampworking. Objects are shaped from prefabricated rods and tubes of glass that become soft and can be manipulated into desired shapes when heated in open flame.

 

Flashing: Decorative process of dipping a clear or colored glass object into molten glass of a contrasting shade, then cutting through the thin "flashing" to create design.

 

Flux: essential glassmaking ingredient. Made of alkali and added to the batch to lower the fusion point of silica.

 

Forest glass: domestic, greenish glass produced in forest glass-houses of Europe in medieval times. Waldglas in German.

 

Freeblowing: Forming of objects on the blowpipe, by blowing the hot glass.

 

Friggers (or "end of day glass") : Objects made in the 19th century from molten glass left over in the factory pots at the end of the day. Often they were made for amusement in England and America. Similar products were made earlier in Spain.

 

Gilding: applying gold onto glass for decoration. The piece would subsequently be fired to the surface.

 

Ice glass: Glass made first in Venice in 16th century. Called ice glass because of its resemblance of cracked ice. It is made by dipping objects in cold water during blowing, or rolling it in splinters of glass.

 

Incalmo: (Italian: graft) Invented around 1600, it is the melting and joining of two different colored hemispherical bowls around their rims. The bowls should have equal diameters.

 

Kiln: oven for heating glass at a lower temperature than that of the furnace. It is used for fusing enamels or kiln forming processes.

 

Kiln-forming: also known as kiln-casting or kiln-fusing. Fusing or shaping glass by heating it in a kiln

 

Knop: A decorative blob or protrusion appearing commonly on stems of drinking glasses, in various styles.

 

Lampworking: see flameworking

 

Latticino: (Italian: "milk") Broad term used to describe opaque white threads of filigree decoration.

 

Lead crystal: (also known as lead glass) Glass with higher proportion of lead oxide. Soft, low melting, brilliant glass made by George Ravenscroft in 1674.

 

(To see the entire list of glass vocabulary, visit the Glass Art Encyclopedia.)

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