Martha Kauppi : Glass Art from Furnace, Flame and Kiln


These pictures show the process I use to make cane. A cane is a long, skinny rod of glass that has a design in it. I use cane in almost all my wall-hung work, and also to make knitting needles.
I melt my glass in an electric kiln that holds 50 pounds of glass at 2100 degrees F. Here you see me gathering glass onto a punty rod to make cane. Tracy is holding the lid of the kiln open for me.
		Once I have glass on my punty (that's the long rod I'm hodling in my hands) I have to shape it. Here you see me shaping the glass using a marver, which is a steel slab. Rolling plus gravity enables me to change the shape of the glass.
After working the glass against the cold marver, it begins to get cold. Then I reheat it in the glory hole. My glory hole is small compared to most, and sits on top of my workbench.
		Here you see me beginning the cane pull. Pulling cane takes two, one on each end. It's a lot like a taffy pull, except much hotter.
Pulling cane is all about heat management. Once the glass begins to cool, it no longer stretches. Ultimately, my goal is to pull as much of the hot glass as possible off both punties.
		Here you see the end of the pull. You can see I did get most of the glass off the punty, and the cane is of relatively uniform thickness. The glow has gone off the cane (although not the thicker end yet), but you can tell it's still very hot by the heat waves rising from it. We hold it under tension until it's cool enough that it won't bend when we set it down.