Glossary of glass art terms

Last updated January 15, 2023

A glossary of terms used in glass art

Abrasion – the technique of grinding shallow decoration with a wheel or some other device. The decorated areas are left unpolished.^[1]
Ale glass – a type of English drinking glass for ale or beer. Ale glasses, first made in the 17th century, have a tall and conical cup, a stem, and a foot. They may be enameled, engraved, or gilded with representations of hops or barley.^[1]
At-the-fire – the process of reheating a blown glass object at the glory hole during manufacture, to permit further inflation, manipulation with tools, or fire polishing.^[1]
Annealing ^[2] – The process of slowly cooling a blown or cast object to prevent the stresses of rapid cooling from cracking or damaging the object.
Battledore – a glassworker’s tool in the form of a square wooden paddle with a handle. Battledores are used to smooth the bottoms of vessels and other objects.^[1]
Blank – any cooled glass object that requires further forming or decoration to be finished.^[1]
Blowpipe – a hollow steel rod, with a mouth piece on one end which the artist blows through to expand a bubble through the hot glass^[1]
Caneworking – the use of cane or rods with color, either single or multiple (see also zanfirico/twisted cane)
Glass casting ^[2]^[3] – Any of several methods of forming glass in a mold, including the pouring of molten glass into a sand mold (sand casting) and the melting of glass cullet in a mold placed in a kiln (kiln casting).
Cullet – broken chunks of glass or waste glass suitable for melting or remelting.
Cut glass – cold decoration by cutting with an abrasive wheel.
Engraving – shallow cold decoration with a sharp point or small wheel
Flameworking – alternate name lampworking,^[2]^[3] the technique of forming glass, from rods and tubes, using a bench top or handheld heat source, formerly lamps, more often today a bench-mounted oxy/propane torch, to shape and form the glass by glassblowing and with the use of tongs, forceps, knives and other small tools. Borosilicate glass is the most common form of glass to be manipulated using this technique.
Feathering – creating feather-like patterns on a glass by dragging a metal tool across the surface of a newly applied wrap.
Frit – crushed glass often melted onto other glass to produce patterns and color
Incalmo – the grafting or joining together, while still hot, of two separately blown glass [bubbles] to produce a single [bubble].^[4]
Knitted glass – incorporates the techniques of knitting, lost-wax casting, mold-making, and kiln-casting.
Latticino – Italian decorative glassblowing technique. Latticino refers to any glass piece created using colored glass canes.
Latticello – a decorative glassblowing technique. A latticello is a complicated design where the glass artist uses a latticino to create a reticello like pattern. Although the latticino" and the reticello are both classic Italian techniques, the latticello is a modern-day twist on classic design.
Lehr – a specialized, temperature-controlled kiln for annealing glass.^[5]

Mandrel – metal rod used to construct a glass bead around. When cooled and removed, the space occupied by the mandrel creates the hole through the bead.
Marver – a tool used in glassblowing A marver is a large flat table. The glass piece is rolled across is surface. It is used to not only shape the glass, but to remove heat as well. The rapid absorption of heat by the marver creates a stronger skin (surface tension) than the use of a wooden tool. Marver is derived from the word "marble." Marble was originally used in the construction of this specialized table. Modern marvers are made of steel, typically stainless steel. Lampworkers use small graphite marvers mounted on or near their torches.
Millefiori ^[3] – an Italian term (a thousand flowers) describing a style of murrine defined by internal patterns made by layering a number of colors and shaping each with an optic mold while molten. This style of murrine results in designs that are often flower-like.

Murrine – Italian term for patterns or images made in a glass cane (long rods of glass) that are revealed when cut or chopped in cross-sections.
Pate de verre^[3] – a paste of ground or crushed glass, and the technique of casting this material into a mold; also applied to a more general range of cast-glass objects.
Prunt – a small blob of glass fused to a piece of glass, often impressed with a pattern or stamp
Punty – occasionally pontil, a solid metal rod, around 5 feet long, used to hold an object being blown or hot-worked after it is removed from the blowpipe.

Reticello – Italian decorative glassblowing technique. This involves the merging of two cane bubbles (one inside the other) in which the straight canes were twisted in opposite directions. Once merged, the opposingly twisted canes cross each other creating a net like pattern. If done the traditional way, small air bubbles will be trapped in a grid pattern between the crossing canes.
Rod – a rod of glass used as a raw material in forming and fusing glass
Studio glass – artistic glass made by an individual or small workshop.
Twisty cane – a cane formed out of different coloured glass twisted together - also known as zanfirico cane
Vitreography (art form) – a style of contained 3-dimensional scenes displayed in a shadow box frame.
Vitreography (printing technique) – use of a 3⁄8-inch-thick (9.5 mm) float glass matrix instead of the traditional matrices of metal, wood or stone.

Vitrigraph pulling – pulling molten glass strings from a wall mounted kiln—called a vitrigraph kiln— usually into shapes such as spirals.

Zanfirico – Italian decorative glassblowing technique involving intricate patterns of colored glass canes arranged and twisted to comprise a pattern within a new single glass cane. These new patterned canes are then used to create a glass work. A synonym for zanfirico is vetro a retorti^[6]

Related Research Articles

Glassblowing is a glassforming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble with the aid of a blowpipe. A person who blows glass is called a glassblower, glassmith, or gaffer. A lampworker manipulates glass with the use of a torch on a smaller scale, such as in producing precision laboratory glassware out of borosilicate glass.

Art glass is a subset of glass art, this latter covering the whole range of art made from glass. Art glass normally refers only to pieces made since the mid-19th century, and typically to those purely made as sculpture or decorative art, with no main utilitarian function, such as serving as a drinking vessel, though of course stained glass keeps the weather out, and bowls may still be useful.

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. Though usage varies, the term is properly restricted to glass made as art in small workshops, typically with the personal involvement of the artist who designed the piece. This is in contrast to art glass, made by craftsmen in factories, and glass art, covering the whole range of glass with artistic interest made throughout history. Both art glass and studio glass originate in the 19th century, and the terms compare with studio pottery and art pottery, but in glass the term "studio glass" is mostly used for work made in the period beginning in the 1960s with a major revival in interest in artistic glassmaking.

Lampworking is a type of glasswork in which a torch or lamp is used to melt the glass. Once in a molten state, the glass is formed by blowing and shaping with tools and hand movements. It is also known as flameworking or torchworking, as the modern practice no longer uses oil-fueled lamps. Although lack of a precise definition for lampworking makes it difficult to determine when this technique was first developed, the earliest verifiable lampworked glass is probably a collection of beads thought to date to the fifth century BC. Lampworking became widely practiced in Murano, Italy in the 14th century. As early as the 17th century, itinerant glassworkers demonstrated lampworking to the public. In the mid-19th century lampwork technique was extended to the production of paperweights, primarily in France, where it became a popular art form, still collected today. Lampworking differs from glassblowing in that glassblowing uses a furnace as the primary heat source, although torches are also used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Millefiori</span> Glasswork technique

Millefiori is a glasswork technique which produces distinctive decorative patterns on glassware. The term millefiori is a combination of the Italian words "mille" (thousand) and "fiori" (flowers). Apsley Pellatt in his book Curiosities of Glass Making was the first to use the term "millefiori", which appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1849; prior to that, the beads were called mosaic beads. While the use of this technique long precedes the term "millefiori", it is now most frequently associated with Venetian glassware.

Cathedral glass is the name given commercially to monochromatic sheet glass. It is thin by comparison with slab glass, may be coloured, and is textured on one side.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glass bead making</span>

Glass bead making has long traditions, with the oldest known beads dating over 3,000 years. Glass beads have been dated back to at least Roman times. Perhaps the earliest glass-like beads were Egyptian faience beads, a form of clay bead with a self-forming vitreous coating. Glass beads are significant in archaeology because the presence of glass beads often indicate that there was trade and that the bead making technology was being spread. In addition, the composition of the glass beads could be analyzed and help archaeologists understand the sources of the beads.

Glass fusing is the joining together of pieces of glass at high temperature, usually in a kiln. This is usually done roughly between 700 °C (1,292 °F) and 820 °C (1,510 °F), and can range from tack fusing at lower temperatures, in which separate pieces of glass stick together but still retain their individual shapes, to full fusing at higher ones, in which separate pieces merge smoothly into one another.

Slumping is a technique in which items are made in a kiln by means of shaping glass over molds at high temperatures. The slumping of a pyrometric cone is often used to measure temperature in a kiln.

Murrine are colored patterns or images made in a glass cane that are revealed when the cane is cut into thin cross-sections. Murrine can be made in infinite designs from simple circular or square patterns to complex detailed designs to even portraits of people. One familiar style is the flower or star shape which, when used together in large numbers from a number of different canes, is called millefiori.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harvey Littleton</span> American artist and educator

Harvey Littleton was an American glass artist and educator, one of the founders of the studio glass movement; he is often referred to as the "Father of the Studio Glass Movement". Born in Corning, New York, he grew up in the shadow of Corning Glass Works, where his father headed Research and Development during the 1930s. Expected by his father to enter the field of physics, Littleton instead chose a career in art, gaining recognition first as a ceramist and later as a glassblower and sculptor in glass. In the latter capacity he was very influential, organizing the first glassblowing seminar aimed at the studio artist in 1962, on the grounds of the Toledo Museum of Art. Imbued with the prevailing view at the time that glassblowing could only be done on the factory floor, separated from the designer at his desk, Littleton aimed to put it within the reach of the individual studio artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caneworking</span> Glassblowing technique

In glassblowing, cane refers to rods of glass with color; these rods can be simple, containing a single color, or they can be complex and contain strands of one or several colors in pattern. Caneworking refers to the process of making cane, and also to the use of pieces of cane, lengthwise, in the blowing process to add intricate, often spiral, patterns and stripes to vessels or other blown glass objects. Cane is also used to make murrine, thin discs cut from the cane in cross-section that are also added to blown or hot-worked objects. A particular form of murrine glasswork is millefiori, in which many murrine with a flower-like or star-shaped cross-section are included in a blown glass piece.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Marquis</span> American studio glass artist

Richard "Dick" Marquis is an American studio glass artist. One of the first Americans ever to work in a Venetian glass factory, he became a master of Venetian cane and murrine techniques. He is considered a pioneer of American contemporary glass art, and is noted for his quirky, playful work that incorporates flawless technique and underlying seriousness about form and color.

Glass casting is the process in which glass objects are cast by directing molten glass into a mould where it solidifies. The technique has been used since the 15th century BCE in both Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Modern cast glass is formed by a variety of processes such as kiln casting or casting into sand, graphite or metal moulds.

Glass production involves two main methods – the float glass process that produces sheet glass, and glassblowing that produces bottles and other containers. It has been done in a variety of ways during the history of glass.

David Scott Patchen is an American glass artist who uses the techniques of cane and murrine in an American style. Patchen's work is known primarily for a combination of complexity and scale in densely patterned glass. His work is in many private and public collections internationally, featured in many publications and frequently in juried shows such as SOFA, Chicago, ART Shanghai and ART Palm Beach. His work is shown in galleries in the U.S., Canada and Europe. Patchen was awarded an artist residency in 2010 in Seto city, Japan where his visit was covered by the local media and included lectures, demonstrations and a show of his work at the Seto City Art Museum. His work has won awards and is in both private and public collections internationally. Based on Patchen's expertise, his book is part of the permanent collection of Giorgio Cini Foundation's Centro Studi del Vetro library in Venice, Italy and the Rakow Library at the Corning Museum of Glass.

Hellenistic glass was glass produced during the Hellenistic period, from the conquests of Alexander the Great to the expansion of the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean, Europe, western Asia and northern Africa. Glassmaking at this time was based on the technological traditions of the Classical antiquity and the Late Bronze Age, but was marked by transition from limited production of luxury objects made for the social elite to mass production of affordable glass vessels used by the broader public to satisfy everyday needs.

The influence of the Islamic world to the history of glass is reflected by its distribution around the world, from Europe to China, and from Russia to East Africa. Islamic glass developed a unique expression that was characterized by the introduction of new techniques and the reinterpreting of old traditions.

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.

Barovier & Toso is an Italian company that specializes in Venetian glass.

References

1 2 3 4 5 6 "The House of Glass - Glass Terminology & Facts". www.thehouseofglassinc.com. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
1 2 3 Whitehouse, David, ed. (1993). Glass: A Pocket Dictionary of Terms Commonly Used to Describe Glass and Glassmaking. Corning, New York: Corning Museum of Glass. ISBN 0-87290-132-7.
1 2 3 4 Fairbanks, Jonathan L.; Pat Warner (1997). Glass Today by American Studio Artists. Museum of Fine Arts Boston. p. 75. ISBN 0-87846-447-6.
↑ Gable, Carl I. (2004). Murano Magic: Complete Guide to Venetian Glass, its History and Artists. Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 0-7643-1946-9.
↑ Collins, E.F. (1921). "Electrically heated glass annealing Lehr". Journal of the American Ceramic Society. 4 (5): 335–349. doi:10.1111/j.1151-2916.1921.tb18664.x.
↑ "Glass Dictionary". Corning Museum of Glass. Retrieved 29 May 2017.

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[:0-1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 "The House of Glass - Glass Terminology & Facts". www.thehouseofglassinc.com. Retrieved 2020-03-29.

[Whitehouse1993-2] 1 2 3 Whitehouse, David, ed. (1993). Glass: A Pocket Dictionary of Terms Commonly Used to Describe Glass and Glassmaking. Corning, New York: Corning Museum of Glass. ISBN 0-87290-132-7.

[Glass_Today-3] 1 2 3 4 Fairbanks, Jonathan L.; Pat Warner (1997). Glass Today by American Studio Artists. Museum of Fine Arts Boston. p. 75. ISBN 0-87846-447-6.

[Gable2004-4] Gable, Carl I. (2004). Murano Magic: Complete Guide to Venetian Glass, its History and Artists. Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 0-7643-1946-9.

[Collins1921-5] Collins, E.F. (1921). "Electrically heated glass annealing Lehr". Journal of the American Ceramic Society. 4 (5): 335–349. doi:10.1111/j.1151-2916.1921.tb18664.x.

[6] "Glass Dictionary". Corning Museum of Glass. Retrieved 29 May 2017.

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