About Lampwork

What is Lampwork?

Have you heard the term lampworking and have no idea what it is? Lampwork is the art of melting glass over a flame until it becomes molten, and then shaping it into another object.   Lampwork got it's name from the lamps that the earliest artists used for the heat source to melt the glass. Today a torch fueled by a propane and oxygen mixed gas is used.  The art of making small glass objects and beads continues to be called Lampwork.

Glassmaking used to be a very guarded secret. Those who knew it passed it on only to their sons, but rarely to anyone else. In some cultures, owning glass was once reserved for royalty. In other cultures, it was a status symbol.

Glass is a medium that can be worked in very many ways. With a heat flame or furnace, you can heat it and then  mold it, make it into "gemstones" or beads,  blow it, fuse or slump it. When made molten, glass can be stretched and pulled into whatever shape you can imagine.This is one of my favorite parts of the process. Lampworking is one of the techniques used to manipulate glass.

Very few companies make the glass that most artists use. The most common glass is a colorful soft glass from Murano, Italy.  Several manufacturers in Italy make this glass, Moretti (Efferte) and Vetrofond (Murano) are two that many soft glass artists use. My preference is the Bullseye line of glass. I find the color pallete more rich.  Any glass - from window "float" glass, sheet glass, leaded glass to wine bottles and glass found on the beach can be cut or broken down to melt to create other objects. Although the color may disappear when put in the flame, as I found when I used cobalt blue bottle pieces I found in the desert, the color went an unattractive brown. If you have an interest in learning more about the wonderful, magical, endless possibilites of hot glass there are wonderful books and vidios out there to choose from. I highly recommend it as an expression for your art.