Black Brocade - Developing a Series

This series began in February 2022.

As with most of my ideas in glass, an idea developed from an exploration into a new technique.

Cane Working

Making cane is the process of stretching masses of colored glass to lengths of roughly thirty feet. These long pieces of glass are cut to 6 inch pieces referred to as canes. Cane working is an additive process. It starts with a simple cane of one color, resulting in a single line. It can progress to using simple canes to make new, more complex canes as pictured below.

Complex canes (Left) Simple single color canes (right)

Variety of complex canes

Using Line as a Means of Design

I wanted to put as much of my focus into making the pattern as I could. So, I chose to only use black as a background color paired with simple forms to best display the white cane work.

Contrast, value, texture, proximity, and depth.

These ideas were not forefront in my mind before I made the first vessel, rather they developed from observations made from each subsequent piece.

Learning About Value

When working in black in white the readability from a distance varies depending on the scale of values used.

A simple way to recognize this principle involves recalling a trip to a museum. When walking into a room of portrait paintings, the light figures pictured against a dark background stand out. Where as crowded rooms painted in monotone value are much harder to read from a distance.

Value in Paintings

This effect of painting light and dark contrast is known by the Italian word chiaroscuro (Tarrgat, 2022). I have always been drawn to this style of paintings where the eye is encouraged to wander to each of the points of focus.

In my practice I found that pieces made with many fine white lines turned into a uniform shade of gray when walking backwards only a few feet.

To embrace the detail or to up the contrast?

This question resulted in many pieces that answered each of these questions individually. There was power to be found in a piece that was readable from across the room. At the same time there was beauty in the intimacy required to appreciate threads of glass as thin as hair.

Balance & Tension

To believe in either of these ideas too seriously didn’t satisfy me. I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. This meant striking a balance between line weights; using big opaque lines next to sharp fine lines, next to wispy lines to create a dynamic image. Challenging myself about what I really wanted to see pushed this series in a direction that focused on creating moments of tension in a pattern.

The following images display detail shots of these pieces as they evolved.

The 1st piece in the series

The 12th piece in the series

The 23rd piece in the series

The 26th piece in the series

For more images of this series - visit the photo section of my portfolio

References

Taggart, E. (2022, August 1). How chiaroscuro emerged from the dark to become one of the most iconic painting styles. My Modern Met. https://mymodernmet.com/chiaroscuro-painting-technique/