The art and tradition of working with glass is an old one. The consequences are that many more households have glass lamp shades at home as part of their interior decor. The slow penetration into homes first picked up during the Industrial Revolution at the same time when gas and electrical lighting reached our doorsteps. A very famous figure who energized the movement to buy glass lamp shades was Louis Comfort Tifany. One could say he single-handedly created the industry on which it rests.
The lamp shades are available in a dizzying array of shapes and designs. Large-scale production methods means artisan teams no longer slave to produce a trickle of products. Instead, popular and hot-selling designs can be issued at breakneck pace to reach many more homes.
The high malleability of glass is derived from the fact that glass becomes soft and flowing at high temperatures. In turn this leads to many stylistic possibilities. Controlling and shaping the glass is a profession dating back thousands of years. A large fraction of products from this profession was in items like glasses, lanterns and containers. The need to cover lightbulbs only came in the last one hundred and fifty years.
Glass is a composite material of silicon and oxygen. Unlike many other natural substances, glass has an amorphous atomic structure. Whereas crystals have neat arrangements of rows of constituent atoms, glass instead is made up of disordered silicon and oxygen atoms. The oft relayed misconception is that the stained windows of old churches show a greater thickness at the bottom edges compared to the top because the glass is permanently a liquid that deforms slowly. However, the truth is more likely that the deformation occurred when the window was first cast and the substance was near a molten state.
Craftsmen use the malleable molten state to their advantage for producing the myraid shapes. To take an example, a craftsman uses a hollow metal tube called a blow pipe to pick up raw glasses. As he rolls it on a surface, he blows into it periodically to give it a cavity and some shape. For small objects, it's very easy to managge the glass. For larger objects, great skill and patience are rquired.
Such work can be improved by addition of small artistic details, for example curling of the lip for a flare effect. The artist Louis Comfort Tiffany incorporated iron rods into his works to depict intricate scenes of nature that were lit up with the stained glass panes. The staining process is aided by addition of frits of iron oxide impurities that give glass its various colors.
Such work can be improved by addition of small artistic details, for example curling of the lip for a flare effect. The artist Louis Comfort Tiffany incorporated iron rods into his works to depict intricate scenes of nature that were lit up with the stained glass panes. The staining process is aided by addition of frits of iron oxide impurities that give glass its various colors.
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