With only two classes left in the session, Everett gave us two more techniques to add to our glassblowing repertoire. Bowls and wraps that go both ways.
Funny enough, each of these new skills at some point entailed, “Hey, remember that thing you’ve been learning to do? Ok, now do the opposite.”
Up until now, we’ve been using gravity to elongate the glass into a cylinder for our cups and vases. To make a bowl instead, we cap the end of the pipe with our thumb (to keep air trapped inside) and hold the pipe up, using gravity to squat out the shape. Then after transferring to a punty, the shape is opened up wide to create the bowl.
When applying body wraps to our glass, we’ve been using extreme care to maintain consistent thickness and spacing of the wrap, all while rolling the pipe away from us. For this new, crazy wrap, we apply it while spinning both ways and paying no attention to thickness or spacing. This ends up adding a pantload of glass to your piece. How much is a pantload exactly? An awful lot. Once the wrap is on, you take a super reheat and marver the wrap into the rest of the glass. Since you marver the piece, this wrap is applied sooner than a traditional body wrap and results in a more subtle addition. Think of a stripe instead of a trail.
In practicing these new tricks, I created a bowl with a light purple stripe and a cup with an orange lip wrap. Although my lip wrap skills are still a work in progress, I am pleased to say that my mistakes are coming fewer and farther between!
