The Harriet Kelsall Jewellery Design Blog

14th June 2010 17:01

Stained Glass

Hi there

The other day, I had a big and rare treat - and it meant a whole day where I was neither working, nor being a mum. I went on a training course to learn how to make copper foiled stained glass at Temsford stained glass.

I decided to go along because I have always been interested in stained glass and my great uncle was actually a well known stained glass designer/maker too. I wanted to see if it had any links to jewellery and also have an idea that I might like to design and make a stained glass window eventually.

Tempsford stained glassis a fascinating family business that was set up in 1978. Fraser took the one-to-one course and was a great teacher and is part of the second generation. He explained that his dad started by making lovely little stained glass mini greenhouses and selling them at Covent Garden Market. Back then there were hardly any such things about and no good suppliers of the relevant materials. Now they are one of the leading suppliers of materials and have a huge shop which is like an Aladdin's cave of beautiful glasses and fascinating tools.

Fraser is very patient and a very good teacher. He explained that they always like to teach one to one - this level of tuition was brilliant and I learned everything from cutting the glass to soldering and finishing the metal at the end. I thought this was excellent value at £75 including any materials I used and I went away very pleased with what I had learned and feeling great.

I had designed a bird 'light catcher' before the course as I had been researching the sorts of thing that might be possible - and decided to take this along with me in case it was something that I might be able to make on the day. I was worried that this might be a bit ambitious as I gather that many people just choose something from their books at the shop, but happily the level was about right and I managed to make it in the afternoon. I am disgustingly proud of it and so am attaching a photo for you to see!

The reason that I chose this design after a few sketches at home is because I haven't worked in blues for a while and with jewellery you have to be very careful not to combine too many colours together. However, with glass shapes like this which are larger, I feel you can get away with a lot more colour combinations. So I wanted to make the most of being able to combine colours together like this!

The different glasses that are available are amazing - and reminded me of gemstones somehow with their bright strong colours and wonderful textures. For my bird, I chose some pieces of 'water glass' which had a gentle undulating ripple on the surface. Fraser recommended a glass with this texture for the tummy of the bird. Using the glasses with the textures was rather like using fabric in certain directions so I tried to cut the glass such that the ripples enhanced the design.

Fraser explained that red and pink glasses were more expensive than the other colours because they actually put real gold into the glass to create those warmer colours. So of course I was drawn to the most expensive colours when I was wandering around in my sandwich break - typical!

We don't normally work in glass but only in precious materials, but Alice did once design some rather lovely necklaces with some beautiful glass drops.

We have previously designed some interesting bird inspired jewellery but actually designing this light catcher made me realise that this isn't something we are asked for as much as I would think.

Looking at these rings again having designed my light catcher I am re-inspired and now want to design an engagement ring inspired by a swallow so watch this space for that one which I am mulling over at the moment.

These kinds of colours work well in jewellery so I figured these would work rather well with the glass too - because glass design and jewellery design have many parallels in fact. Of course you have the metal work combined with the transluscent or opaque colour and also with copper foil you can have different metal finishes too.

I decided to include the red with my bird for the light catcher - a little hint of red with blue can sometimes work well.