Frantz Art Glass Blog

Frantz Art Glass & Supply carries a large selection of 104 C.O.E. sheet glass. This glass is made from the same glass as the rods created by Effetre / Moretti.  To me this is a huge area of possibilities for letting your creative energies run wild.

When I started using Effetre glass rods 27 years ago, the company was still call Moretti and they had never made sheet glass at their factory because there was no interest in artist sheet glass in Italy.  This fact didn’t stop me from laying a bunch of rods together and fusing them into a sheet.  This method produces a 3/8 inch thick sheet, but the colors were so wonderful that I didn’t care.  Effetre has only produced sheet glass for the last 15 years, but what a difference the thinner sheets make when you are fusing a multi layered project.

Effetre sheet glass ranges from 2 mm to 4 mm in thickness.   The 2 mm sheets are specifically made in black and clear, to be used for creating dichroic colors.  The dichroic sheets are made thin to make it easier to use a dichroic strip, which are manufactured in-house by Frantz Art Glass.  The dichroic strips are annealed to make the strips easier to place in and out of the torch flame without shocking and it also makes it easier to see which side the dichroic coating is on.

Out of the 45 colors of sheet glass made by Effetre, there are 4 colors that have goldstone running through the base colors

Strips of a dichroic color call "Corksrew".

One of my favorite things to do using sheet glass is to combine lampworked elements with sheet glass and tack-fuse them together with kiln heat.  There is a slight learning curve to this technique, but it can yield some amazing results.

Frantz Art Glass has around 45 different colors of Effetre sheet glass and this does not include the 25 different dichroic colors and patterns that are available in ¼”, ½” and 1 inch wide strips.  All the different sheet glass colors can be purchased in ¼, ½ or full sheets, depending on what you need.

Fused heart pin made with murrini melted into a sheet of clear glass.

Example of a lampworked squid that was tack fused onto a piece of blue sheet glass.

patfrantz 104 COE Glass Review 104 C.O.E. sheet glass, dichroic glass, fusing, Lampworking, murrini

I recently paid a visit to Double Helix Glassworks to ask Jed (glass maker extraordinaire) some questions on how to get good color out of some of his more challenging palette.

I bet I am not the only person who finds using the new silvered glass colors a little frustrating sometimes.  I look online and see fabulous beads that some people managed to make out of the silvered glass colors and say to myself, I ought to try that.  It is a bummer when I do try colors like Luna, Pandora and Khaos, to mention a few and all I manage to make is poop colored beads with no flashing colors of blue, teal, ruby and purple.

When I asked Jed what I was doing wrong, I got a lecture on how the crystal growth manifests in the heated glass.  What it boiled down to was that I was over working the glass when I made a bead.  Apparently if you take a bead that has transitioned into the tan – poop brown color range, you should heat it all the way to clear and take it out of the flame and cool it until it is not glowing and then just kiss the bead with the edge of the flame way out on the tip to bring out the desired colors.

One of my first beads I made with Khaos that turned poop colored.

I think a beadmakers working style and the type of torch and fuel they use has some major effects on the out come, but I have seen beautiful silvered glass beads made on all types of torches.  Jed also suggested that turning up the oxygen when I work silvered glass colors could produce better results.

I have better luck with the silvered glass colors that you reduce to bring up the metals to the surface like Triton and Aurae.  It took me awhile to figure out how to get good results with Psyche and I made a major breakthrough when I discovered that Psyche worked really well when it was used over Opal Yellow, Dark Ivory and a new Vetrofond “Odd” color called ELO.  Dark Ivory gives a more organic look to the beads when used with the silver colors because it produces heavy webbing with black lines in it.  I have become an avid fan of ELO since it arrived from Italy because many of the silvered glass colors look fabulous when you use ELO as the base for the bead.  Instead of the heavy webbing that Dark Ivory produces, ELO gets warm sepia fuming on the surface of the bead that is just plain yummy and the silvered glass colors glow on this particular “odd” glass.

Example of heavy webbing on Dark Ivory decorated with Triton.

Example of TE -362 from Double Helix over ELO.

Double Helix Glassworks has been producing more new glass colors of late like Clio and Ekho that start out looking like a transparent lavender glass and change tobeautiful lustered ruby colors – yum!

Bead made with Ekho and encased with Aether.

Tabular bead made with CiM Creamsicle and Electric Avenue and decorated with Triton.

Tabular bead made with CiM Poison Apple with Triton swirls.

Bead made with CiM Canyon de Chilly, decorated with Psyche and encased with clear.

patfrantz 104 COE Glass Review, Lampworking Techniques, Silver Glass Colors

The perfect clear glass rod is the holy grail of beadmakers. A perfect clear should resists scumming and be optically free of streaks and bubbles.  This said, the perfect clear is hard to find and there are many more clears to choose from on the market these days.

A lot of beadmakers are tired of picking the scum and bubbles out of the clear glass that comes from Italy.  One way to improve the cleanliness of your clear rods is to wash your rods in your dishwasher and many beadmakers swear that it helps a lot.

Larry Scott developed a technique for good clear. He places his clear rods in pickling solution that is used to take the scum off of silver after it has been soldered. He uses the solution at 1/3 to ½ the strength you would to pickle silver, in a long Pyrex baking dish that can hold the 13” rods comfortably covered with solution.  The pickling solution works best if it is warm and leave the glass in the solution for a while, an hour or so (experimenting with time lengths is always a good thing to do).  When you take the glass rods out of the solution, thoroughly rinse the glass and let it dry standing up on its ends so the water slides off.

The two Italian glass factories that provide a lot of the glass available to beadmakers have tried to make a better clear over the past 10 years, but their efforts have still fallen short of what most beadmakers would consider a perfect clear.  The cleaning techniques that I mentioned above help to improve the cleanliness of the Italian clear glasses, but I have heard many complain that it still falls short of what beadmakers would like.

There are a number of new efforts by newer glass factories like CiM, Double Helix, Troutman Art Glass and Precision 104. All these companies make good clear glass, with CiM being the only one that is competitively priced with the Italian glass.  Some beadmakers still complain that CiM clear is not perfect enough, but the factory goes out of its way to hand wrap the clear glass rods to prevent scratches and dirt accumulation.

Double Helix, Troutman Art Glass and Precision 104 have all produced premium clear with a premium price tag.  I hear various complaints about these clears also, but from personal experience, I find they are superior to what the Italians make and a whole lot easier to use.  The biggest complain about these premium clear glass rods is the price.

If you have come up with a system to improve the clarity of any of the available clear rods on the market, by all means please leave a comment on this blog.

Aether by Double Helix can be acquired in "Artist Points" store at Frantz Art Glass.

Paddle made with CiM / Messy Color Clear.

Paddle made of Diamond Clear by Precision 104.

Bead made with Clarity- Super Clear by Troutman Art Glass.

Paddle made with Vetrofond Clear.

Paddle made with Effetre Clear.

patfrantz 104 COE Glass Review, Flameworking 104 Glass, Lampworking

If you are in search of more information and maybe some inspiration, the “Web Gallery” section of the Frantz Art Glass Newsletter is a great place to look.

Along with the button for the “Color Palette” that I talked about last week, there is a button that says “Web Gallery” on the home page of the Frantz Newsletter at http://frantznewsletter.com .  There is a wealth of images and information in this section of the newsletter.

When you click on the Web Gallery, a web page appears that shows links for the three different sections of the web gallery that are Focal Beads, Spacer Beads and Strands.  Click on one of the choices and you will be taken to a page of thumb (small images) to pick from.  When you click on a thumb image, a large image will appear with a list of the different glass colors that were used in that bead and the glass colors are linked to the Frantz Art Glass web page for easy purchase, plus pertinent information on how the bead was made.

If you have an exceptional bead image that you are proud of, I urge you to send it in with your personal information (i.e., website, social network,etc.), what glass the bead was made with, how the bead was made (be brief) and what kind of torch and fuel set-up you are using.  All bead images should be 400 pixels x 400 pixels at 72 dpi resolution or larger.  We will post these to our Web Gallery so you can share your beads and information with our customers.

Click on images below  to enlarge.

Gallery Thumb Page for Web Gallery

Bead image on information page in Web Gallery.

patfrantz Lampworking

For the past few weeks I have been working on up-dating the “color palette”.  I thought it might be timely to talk about this tool.

The “Color Palette” is part of the Frantz Art Glass Newsletter website, this is where you will find a wealth of information about glass and our latest sales and promotions and more!  Just visit us at: www.frantznewsletter.com, click on Color Palette – it’s the flashing green and blue button at the top of the page, you can’t miss it.

If you have never checked out the Color Palette, I think you are in for a treat.  I have always liked looking at paint or thread color palettes and I think our glass color palette is exceptional for comparing available glass colors from all the glass factories at one time.

I have set up a few screen shots of what you will see as you use the color palette.  I think that the color palette is a way awesome tool for finding out what colors are available and an easy way to get to the web page of the colors that you are interested in.

There are 72 new colors that came in from the different manufacturers since the color palette was up-dated last year.  When the up-date is complete, Frantz Art Glass will notify everyone who is on our newsletter email list.  If you are not on our newsletter list, I urge you to sign up so that you will know when important information on sales and New Products are available.

Click on image to go to larger version of image.

Home page of Color Palette

Picking color from palette.

Web page of glass color from color palette.

patfrantz 104 COE Glass Review, Flameworking 104 Glass

Those of you who like Vetrofond “Black” (791064) and “Crystal Clear” (791005) will be happy to know that we received a new Vetrofond shipment that contains Black and Crystal Clear, plus a few other colors.

Vetrofond Black is one of the better Blacks on the market these days because it is a very dense Blue-Black and remains very dark even when it is pulled down to stringer size.  If you are new to lampworking, you might not know that the Black sold by Effetre is a very dark Purple-Brown that looks like dark purple when pulled down to a stringer and used over a light colored glass.

The third Black on the market is provided by CiM-Messy Color and it is a dark Gray-Black that stays very dense when pulled down to a stringer, making “Tuxedo” (CiM’s name for their standard Black glass rods) a great contender for best Black on the world market.

There is a unique glass color that came in this shipment that has the name “ELO” (791817) which stands for Extra Light Olive. This glass has a pale but distinct olive green color and is being released to our customers January 29, 2010, adding another unique color to the now vast palette available to lampworkers.

There is another color of note that came in this shipment. When we first received Yellow Ochre from Vetrofond many years ago, it was never yellow-it was green! Well, that’s Vetrofond’s trademark, odd lots. Then a few years ago this color (791460) came in much more yellow in tone. I’m telling you all this because this shipment produced BOTH tonalities. So, to not confuse our wonderful customers, we decided to give the “Wasabi” Green version it’s own stock number (791461). So the good news for everyone is that there are two versions of Yellow Ochre, one being avocado green and one a warm yellowish green. If you look at Effetre you will see Yellow Ochre as a strong yellow.

“ELO”  791817	“Black”  791064	“Wasabi”  791461	“Crystal Clear”  791005

Bead made with ELO and a Lt. Turquoise swirl design.	ELO with patches of Wasabi and Te-362 stringer decorations	This bead is half ELO and half Dirty Martini with SIS swirls.	Bead made with ELO and bumps of Aurae covered in Clear.

Wasabi with Triton & Hades ribbon.

patfrantz 104 COE Glass Review, Lampworking

I have been working with some of my Carlo Dona tools lately and I have an itch for more of these great tools and I was wondering if there were any more of you out there that feel the same way?

It is kind of hard to get Carlo Dona tools, so I have been working with my husband Mike to organize an order of certain Carlo Dona tools because Mike will be going to Murano in April.  The apartment that Mike stays in on Murano is just a few blocks away from the Carlo Dona shop and I thought that this is a perfect opportunity to have him pick up some more tools.

I am mainly having Mike bring back the three sizes of raggiera or fin mold for producing fancy cane.  There are two or three sizes of bell flower presses and the wire holding tool to use with them ( I tried making glass objects on the ends of copper wire by holding it with piers and the wire vibrates from the torch heat and makes working the glass very difficult) that I want him to bring back.  The Carlo Dona work shop started making some really nice leaf mashers, plain mashers and ribbed mashers mounted on heavy tweezers that work really well.  There are some nice bead presses like a sea shell shape, different size hearts and squares that I want him to bring back also.  Another tool to consider is the glass shears, they are a well balanced hot glass cutting tool.

There are a few brass single sided press molds that I think are interesting.  One is a lady’s face, one is a lion and the most interesting one is a skull.

If anyone reading this blog is interested in possibly connecting with some of these fine Carlo Dona tools, contact me at patfrantz@frantzartglass.com and I will try to make your tool wishes come true.  I will not know the prices until I find out from Carlo Dona what is available.

Below are some photos of the tools I am interested in.

Bell flowers and leaf made with Carlo Dona tools	Bell flower presses_Carlo Dona	Wire holding tool
Wire holding tool #1	Small raggieras Carlo Dona	Glass Shears – Carlo Dona
Skull press_Carlo Dona	Small sea shell press_Carlo Dona	Tweezers showing three different heads

patfrantz Lampworking

When you order some glass colors, is it a surprise to open the box and find a radically different tonality than the color you were use to?  Well, this is something that happens with certain glass colors and it took me a long time to get the Italians to explain why this happens.

It seems that there are a handful of glass colors that are very sensitive to heat and even the amount of humidity there is in the air when the components are measured and put into the batch.  Murano is built on tiny islands in the middle of a large salt-water lagoon and is constantly subject to varying levels of humidity that can make a powder (which is the form the elements that go into a glass batch come in) be lighter or heavier.

Another component of the tonality variable with certain glass colors is heat.  I complained for years about the changes in the shades that Coral (591420) would shift to from batch to batch.  A couple of years ago I was shown a sample book of a single batch of coral and there was a huge difference in the tonality from the beginning of the pull to the end of the pull, there was about 6 different tonalities in a single run of coral!  The factory said that they try to send what they think coral should look like, but we told them that they should sell all the tonalities to us because they are all beautiful in their own way.

Two other colors that have huge tonality variables are Dark Pink (591265) and Gold Pink (591456).  What you must do if you get a tonality of the three colors I have talked about in this blog and you like it a lot, get as much as you can.  With these colors, it is kind of like getting yarn to knit a sweater.  If you don’t get enough yarn of the same dye batch to make your sweater, when you go back to get more yarn, there will most likely be no more of the batch that you bought and your sweater will have two different shades of the same color in it.

I have been trying for 25 years to get Effetre to make a pinkish coral that I got in the very first batch of glass I ordered from them ( when the factory was still owned by Moretti) and I am still waiting.

Shown below are sample cards of the different Corals, Dark Pink and Gold Pink, to give you a sense of how different these three colors can be from batch to batch.

A sample board showing the range that Coral #591420 can come in.

A sample borad showing the range that Gold Pink #591456 can come in.

A sample borad of Dark Pink #591256 that shows the range of tonalities this color can come in.

patfrantz Flameworking 104 Glass

Happy New Year everyone!!!  There are two new colors from CiM that just arrived this week and they are both new blues.  One is “Zachary” 511589 and the other is called “Great Bluedini” 511590.

• Zachary – #511589
• Great Bluedini – #511590

Zachary is what some people call baby blue, but it can also be called a very pale periwinkle.  When you compare regular Periwinkle with Zachary, Zachary is 50% lighter than Periwinkle.  I like the results I got by pairing Zachary with Cranberry Pink (used in the form of a rose cane), with a little goldstone ribbon thrown in the mix for some flash.

Tabular bead made of Zachary decorated with goldstone ribbon and rose cane.

Bead made with Zachary, Great Bluedini and goldstone ribbon cane.

The Great Bluedini kind of looks like a transparent version of Mermaid and could be describe as a rich dense blue-green.  In fact when you pair Great Bluedini with Mermaid, it makes both colors pop.  I made a white heart out of Great Bluedini and decorated it with roses out of Cranberry Pink and some goldstone ribbon, with good results.

To see how Great Bluedini worked as a core color, I made a dichroic covered heart pendant with a core of Great Bluedini and I really like how it came out.  I tried several more beads out of Zachary and Great Bluedini to show how these colors look in different arrangements and you can view them below.

White heart bead encased in Great Bluedini decorated with roses and goldstone.

Dichroic heart pendant with a core of Great Bluedini.

Flowers made of Great Bluedini, Pulsar and Poison Apple leaf.

Tabular bead made of Zachary decorated with goldstone ribbon and rose cane.

patfrantz 104 COE Glass Review

I have been personally struggling over the past 10 years with the challenge of getting prescription eyewear to use while doing torch work.  In the past I have had to buy new prescription didymium glasses every time my eyes changed significantly and I had to get new glasses made.

I was thrilled when our protective eyewear provider started making a comfortable Fit-Over style of didymium’s, plus shade #3 and shade #5 borosilicate type eyewear for the lampworking community.

I have had didymium glasses that had a prescription for close-up work for years, but when I look up and focus on something farther away I get slightly seasick and I have to change back and forth to my regular glasses in order to not get a headache.

I decided I had to try the Fit-Over style of didymiums when they became available and I am thrilled with being able to see no matter where I look.  Plus I don’t need to get a new pair of prescription didymium glasses anymore!

I highly recommended this eyewear solution for all lampworkers who wear glasses, especially bifocals or transition lenses.

patfrantz Lampworking