What Is Fused Glass?
When glass is heated to temperatures of 1450 F - 1550 F it becomes semi-liquid. Two or more pieces of ‘compatible' glass placed on top of each other and heated to this temperature will fuse together to form a single piece of glass. The glass must be compatible because incompatible glass will expand and contract at different rates and cause the final product to shatter as it cools.
At Lewis Creek Glassworks we use Bullseye and Uroboros compatible glass to make unique jewelry, plates, bowls, coasters and other products. We fire this glass in kilns specially designed for glasswork so that it fuses and produces the designs and color combinations we want. Flat items, such as coasters, have been fired once, but pieces that are shaped, such as bowls, require a second firing at about 1300 F in order for them to be molded into shape. That is why fused glass is sometimes called ‘kiln-formed' glass.
Much of our jewelry also contains a special kind of glass called ‘dichroic' glass.Basically, dichroic glass is made by vacuum-depositing multiple thin layers of exotic materials onto glass. This glass is what causes the metallic, color-changing, shimmering effects in our work. The procedure is quite difficult but the effects are very beautiful.