Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Michael Krumme of LA responds to a discussion about how some flower stem perfume stoppers are made.

I had a question about the use of the term “casing” to create these stoppers. My understanding of the term casing, as used in glassmaking, is that it a piece is said to be “cased” when a piece of hollowware has two or more layers of glass, usually of different colors. I’m sure there are various ways to achieve this, but I believe one is to blow a gather of glass on what is to be the innermost color, then submerge it in glass of the second color, repeating the process until the number of desired layers is achieved. This is my understanding of how, say, the base glass article for what will be crafted into cameo glass would be made.

Based on a visual inspection of the stoppers in the photographs, I would have said that the flowers on these were “applied” rather than “cased.” Am I wrong? Or was the point of the discussion the fact that the casing test was used to determine whether the two different colors of glass would fuse propertly, or if they were incompatible?

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2011 Carder Steuben Club annual Symposium will be held at The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY from September 15-17, 2011.