Friday 30 November 2012

RGH 1 (Bob) at the International Festival of Glass

 
Along with Nicky and Jodie and with help from Amy, Loz and Adam we represented Plymouth College of Art at the International Festival of Glass this year. I did some demos (see pic below) on how to make stemware without an assistant but the main reason we were there was to run an affordable furnace making course. Louise Cloke and Sarah Fell, recent graduates from PCA were selected for the prestigious Biannale exhibition and Louise was awarded an honoury mention.
 
 

We built the furnace in 2 1/2 days without the use of a workshop. In fact we built the whole thing with an angle grinder with a cutting wheel, a welder (borrowed from the brilliant Merlin), a drill and an assortment of hand tools. The group was fantastic, with lots of enthusiasm and a great sense of excitement and fun.



 
We lit the furnace and went on to make glass from it. I learnt a tremendous amount from the other demonstrators and would like to thank Merlin for all his help and tremendous support. Thanks too to Katie, Kieth, Gaz and all at Ruskin.
Special thanks to Plymouth College of Art for their continued support for this project.
 
We put together a facebook page and have uploaded all the photos that show construction of the furnace. It's called BOB Too and you can find it at http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.144297652377597.30650.142804709193558&type=3#!/Bobtoo2012 .
 
 
 
Abobe. This is the first piece of glass to be made from Bob 2. Look out for the introduction of a user friendly version Bob 3 sometime in the new year.
Below. Demonstrating at the Ruskin Glass Centre. I was delighted to find that on that day, the glass quality from Bob was better than that from the larger glass furnace at Ruskin
 
 
 

Wednesday 18 July 2012

Only one place left on the affordable furnace course at the International Festival of Glass

There's one place left on the course I'm running at the IFG from Aug 20th. We'll be building an affordable glass furnace and working from it, finding new ways to work without an assistant. This is all to create a new, sustainable business model for glass blowing students and graduates. If we can get lots of micro businesses up and running in sheds in our gardens, one in ten could become larger and who knows? Perhaps in 10 years time we may have new glass factories and a healthy manufacturing industry in the UK. For more info, go to  http://www.ifg.org.uk

Here's a sample of work made last week without an assistant. The course is not about what I can do, but what anyone can do with a bit of patience and enthusiasm


Sunday 13 May 2012


I would like to thank Plymouth College of Art for their support and encouragement, without which none of the work on this blog would have been possible


All research, published papers and technical information on this blog is the intellectual property of Ian Hankey but is free of charge to anyone who finds it useful. Any attempt to profit financially by selling information to a third party is a breach of copyright. Help and advice using skype will be given on the building of a furnace providing that the glassmaker uses the burner and control system specified (see the Combustion system, Saflame page for further info)
Furnace design © Ian Hankey Sept 1st 2002
Blog © Ian Hankey 14th March 2011

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I'm running a master class at the International Festival of Glass at the Ruskin Glass Centre from the 20th August. We will be building a furnace on site and working it using recycled glass, learning how to make complex glassware without the aid of an assistant. For information about the course and the International Glass Fesival go to http://www.ifg.org.uk  
This year is particularly exciting as Richard Marquis is making a rare UK visit. Although his course is already full it's well worth going just to see if you can watch him work.
http://www.ifg.org.uk

Monday 26 March 2012

Research at Plymouth College of Art

The workshop, a collaboration between myself on behalf of Plymouth College of Art, Dartington Crystal and The Shops at Dartington

Tuesday 28 February 2012

Up-cycling



Did you know that you can use all the couloured waste glass from your sudio to produce this transparent blue, no matter what coulour you put in? Most people think that if you re-melt coloured glass you will get swirls or a dirty brown. That's the case with cast glass, but at standard working temperatures the furnace is actually a chemical reactor. The chemical reaction that takes place is homogenous, and gives this light blue every time with only a slight variation ( 6 melts so far ). As we can be paying up to £1000 per ton these days, it makes sense to recycle all our coloured glass as well as the clear. Check out the pieces below. These are made from glass that was destined for land fill. On a page on this site you will be able to read about using bottle glass and other recycled glass to produce 100% upcycled products like these:-