Collaborative work with Beth Horsley-Frost

This body of work began as a collaborative project blacksmith Beth Horsley-Frost and I took on during our second year at UCA Farnham. Our goal was to explore ways of combining blown glass with metal elements. One of the most exciting parts of our collaboration has been working as each other's assistant while we make things; we both get to participate in all aspects of our craft processes and get to know the materials better.

Through a long process of experimentation and development, we found that we could get very nice results from glass blown into or onto ruffled metal forms. Our final submission for the project was the group of experimental vessels in the gallery below.

Our most recent collaborative piece, "Sunset in Steel", includes a collar of hand-forged iron scrolls rather than a sheet-steel ruffle.

Beth and I have continued to design pieces together, and plan to continue collaborating in the future. We both love seeing how the metal changes the form of the glass bubbles and the interplay between reflections and colors on both materials.

Ruffled Metal and Glass Vessels

For each of these pieces, Beth creates a ruffled collar or set of elements from strips of either steel or copper sheet. We then take the collars into the hotshop, where I blow a glass bubble through or onto the metal components.

Ruffled Metal

Sunset in Steel

This piece is the first of a new series of steel and glass objects Beth and I have been designing. The goal with this object was to highlight the fluidity of the hot glass and the ways in which the steel scrollwork collar would affect its form throughout the making process. The glass has warped from the weight of the steel and kept small "scars" of scale from the initial contact between the two materials; these markings and the ripples surrounding the collar form a record of the process.

The piece is 19 inches tall (48cm) and weighs 10.6 pounds (4.8 kg).

Sunset in Steel