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<h1>Glass Courses : Liquid Glass specialise in glass courses, blowing, and casting.</h1>
<h2>A unique facility offering the opportunity for beginners and those with previous
glass experience to work with this exciting material in a studio atmosphere
with qualified glass makers and designers.</h2>
<h3>glass courses, glass blowing, stained glass, glass school, glass workshops,
glass kiln, glass casting, glass craft.</h3>
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<p>The revolutionary discovery <b>glass school</b> that glass could be blown and
expanded to <b>glass blowing</b> any shape was made in the third quarter of
the 1st century BC, in the Middle East along the Phoenician coast. Glassblowing
soon spread and became the standard way of shaping glass vessels until the 19th
century. The necessary tool is a hollow iron pipe <b>glass kiln</b> about 1.2
m (4 ft) long with a mouthpiece <b>glass casting</b> at one end. The glassblower,
or gaffer, <b>stained glass</b> collects a small glass courses amount of molten
glass, called a gather, on the end of the blowpipe and rolls it against a paddle
or metal plate to shape its exterior (marvering) and to cool it slightly. The
gaffer <b>glass workshops</b> then blows into the pipe, expanding the gather
into a bubble, or parison. By constantly reheating at the furnace opening, by
blowing and marvering, the gaffer controls the form and thickness. Simple hand
tools such as shears, tongs (pucellas), and paddles are used to refine the form,
often while the glassblower sits in the special “glassmaker's chair”, one with
extended arms to <b>glass kiln</b> support the blowpipe. Blown glass <b>stained
glass</b> can also be shaped with moulds: part-size <b>glass casting</b> moulds
pattern the gather, which is then removed and blown to the desired size. Full-size
moulds into which the gather is entirely blown impart size, shape, and decoration.
Additional gathers may be applied and manipulated to form stems, handles, and
feet, or they glass courses may be trailed <b>glass workshops</b> on and tooled
for decoration. A shaped bubble can be <b>glass blowing</b> “flashed” with colour
by dipping it into molten glass of contrasting colour. To make cased glass,
a gather is placed within, and fused to, one or more layers of differently coloured
glass. For finish work <b>glass school</b> and fire polishing at the mouth of
the furnace, the gather is transferred to a solid iron rod called a pontil,
applied opposite the blowpipe, which is then removed. When the pontil is cracked
off it leaves a “pontil mark” that may be later ground or polished away.</p>
<p>Stained Glass, translucent coloured glass used to compose designs in windows.
The technique <b>glass kiln</b> is similar to mosaic, the pieces of glass being
held in strips of cast lead glass courses and mounted in a metal framework.
Stained glass depends for its effect on light being transmitted through the
translucent glass; thus the art is known as painting with light. It reached
its zenith in Gothic architecture, most notably in France <b>glass workshops</b>
from about 1130 to 1330. Two types of glass were used in Gothic stained glass—pot
glass and flashed glass. Pot glass was of uniform colour, which was achieved
by adding <b>glass blowing</b> oxides of iron (red), copper (green), or <b>glass
casting</b> cobalt (blue) to the raw materials of glass, a transparent mixture
of potash (later soda) and limestone. Flashed glass, made in order to obtain
translucency <b>stained glass</b> with deep colours, was produced by fusing
a thin layer of coloured glass to a thicker layer of clear glass while both
were still hot. The artist began by making a small-scale sketch of the design,
and from this making a cartoon, a full-size plan drawn with lead or tin point
on a wooden board or table coated with chalk or white paint; late Gothic <b>glass
kiln</b> and Renaissance cartoons were made on parchment, cloth, paper, or cardboard.
The lines representing the lead supports were drawn in black. Next, sheets of
coloured glass were laid on a table glass courses and cut with an iron <b>glass
casting</b> tool heated to incandescence. The outlines of costume, facial features,
and small designs were drawn on the individual pieces with a black or dark brown
enamel-like paint made of powdered glass, metallic salts such <b>glass blowing</b>
as iron and copper oxides, other minerals, and liquid. These lines <b>glass
workshops</b> were usually drawn on the inner side of the glass and were fused
to the stained glass by firing it at a low temperature. The malleable double
lead strips, shaped like an H in cross section in order to grasp the edges of
the glass on both sides, were then cut and shaped. Units of lead and glass were
fixed to the window's larger iron frame, or armature, an integral part of the
design in early windows.</p>
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