Lampworking

TOM GALBRAITH & RACHEL ELLIOT

The class will focus on small to medium scale objects: pendants, blown beads, rings, and marbles. Students will learn to make their own colour using gold and silver fuming techniques. These fuming techniques will be used as surface treatments and as encasements. Other techniques that will be explored such as inclusion of synthetic opals and palladium foil. As the class progresses we will explore hollow forms such as goblets, vases, and perfume bottles. Rachel Elliott will bring the added dimension of coldworking to the lampworking process. We will use the diamond flatbed wheel, the wet belt sander, etching, engraving, and sandblasting.
This will be a fast pace course ideally suited to beadmakers and artists who have some experience working with glass.

Click to enlarge the image

Tom Galbraith

Tom Galbraith was born in California in 1960. He has lived and worked in Milwaukee, Wisconsin since 1970. Tom began his sojourn into glassblowing in 1980 when he apprenticed for six years in the neon industry, eventually branching out on his own. He then logically moved into scientific glassblowing in 1995 with a one year apprenticeship in the chemistry department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where he fabricated and repaired scientific apparatus. During this same time, he also taught himself borosilicate lampworking which he considers a more organic process from the more manipulated or tooled process used in scientific glassblowing and neon. In his artistic work, he is inspired by the plant and mineral world and tries to come as close to natural phenomenon as possible. For the last 25 years, he has worked as an independent glass artist in Milwaukee where he owns and operates his own studio, Luminous Glassblowing. He sells nationally to galleries, bead stores and jewelers. Since 1990, he has taught both individuals on a long-term basis as well as small groups in his home studio. Since 2005, Tom has taught or assisted in Lampworking, Neon, and Plasma courses at the Glass Furnace.

Rachel Mary Elliott

Rachel Mary Elliott graduated from Edinbrugh College of Art, Scotland, in 2007 with an honours degree in Design and Applied Arts: Architectural Glass. Currently based in Edinbrugh, she is building her glassworks studio, which already has the biggest flat-bed kiln in Scotland. Rachel merges a variety of techniques to produce glass art which aims to retain elements of the familiar and sometimes a little of the quirky and ridiculous.

* An additional €20 registration fee is charged during application
** The amount of deposit to be paid is €300
*** The accommodation is full board and the fee is € 35 euro per person/per night in room for 3-4 people. Single and double rooms are limited.
Please click www.glassfurnace.org/yeni/kampus_en.php link for details.