What is Glass Fusing?

    Glass fusing, sometimes mistakenly called Slumping, is the process of using a kiln to heat and then join together pieces of glass. As you will see, slumping is just part of the process. If you apply heat to glass it will soften. If you continue to apply heat, the glass will eventually become fluid and flow together. Two or more pieces of glass can be fused together, and when cooled properly, become one solid, unbroken piece. I typically use anywhere from 5 to 30 different colors and styles of glass and literally hundreds, if not thousands, of individual pieces of glass in one of my designs.

    During the design of my work, I want the glass to be in many different sizes and shapes to conform to my ideas. To get just the right shape I not only cut the glass, but I might also break it by dropping it on the floor or hitting it with a hammer. I sometimes place the glass in a kiln and after heating it up, I dunk it in water to shatter it into small pieces. I also smash and grind my glass to form different sized glass chunks, called frit. Frit, in various sizes as well as glass powder is commercially available and I use it extensively as well.

    The images in the glass are achieved using porcelain enamels. Enamels are basically very finely ground glass suspended in a medium, usually pine oil. I mix them to a consistency of printing ink. My images are prepared using a photo emulsion on a screen and printed on a piece of glass in the same manner one would print on any other surface using the screen printing technique. The difference is that because I am using glass as my base and as my ink, I can then sandwich it between another piece of glass to give a sense of depth to the finished work. When I have all my design elements in place, I load everything into a kiln and begin the fusing process.

    The heating phase which takes place between room temperature and around 1200° to 1700° Fahrenheit, will take anywhere from 2 to 12 hours. The cooling phase (called annealing) is much more critical, lasting from 4 hours to a many days, depending on the thickness of the glass. The work featured in my Gallery takes around 30 hours from the time that I place the glass into the kiln until the time that I take it out. I have done work where, because of the size and thickness of the glass, the firing time was as long as 6 days.

    Once the glass is cool I grind and polish the edges to give it a finished look. The piece is then placed back into the kiln and heated once again. This step is called slumping and is what gives the work its final shape. The glass is heated until it is just soft enough to form into a mold (about 1100° F) to create any number of items such as bowls, platters, wall sconces or door panels. This process of slumping takes approximately an additional 16 hours to complete.

    Once the slumping process is finished, the piece is taken out of the kiln and may be taken back to the grinder to be polished some more. The work is then thoroughly cleaned and finally signed and dated.