Thursday, 10 April 2008

Ann Robinson

New Zealander Ann Robinson has been pre-eminent in the field of lost-wax glass-casting for a long time.

You can see examples of her beautiful work here. This series of tall vases is one of my favourites. And her flax pods are amazing!

She has a fascinating step-by-step description of the casting process, in a slideshow here.

2 comments:

Nicola said...

They're absolutely gorgeous. But what is wax glass?

Grace Dalley said...

She casts glass using the "lost-wax", or "cire perdu" method: a model is made in wax; a mould is constructed around the wax; the wax is burned out in the kiln; molten glass is poured in to the now hollow mould; the glass is allowed to cool and harden; the mould is broken off the outside of the new glass object; and the glass object is then hand-polished.

It's a technique that creates unique objects, as the wax original is lost in the process each time.

I encourage you to watch her slideshow (link in the post), as it's much easier to understand the process by looking at the pictures.