Course: Design Crafts
Title: “a part” of one
Description: The piece I have created is a mixture of both glass and ceramic, supported by a wooden frame. I have used the wax glass casting technique to produce the glass piece. For the ceramic piece I have used earthenware clay, with brown slip and the burnishing technique on one side and white inlay slip decoration on the other side. I wanted to bring these two pieces together and so I created a wooden frame in order to do this, allowing the pieces to sit together as one.
Each piece is inspired by the design on a Bronze Age shield. I wanted to use the design of the shield and incorporate it in a 2D and 3D piece which could be brought together as one final piece, as a decorative artefact, which involved using ancient processes and techniques as well as ancient designs in a new contemporary way.
Inspiration: Bronze Age shields, Svenstrup shield
My piece is a mixture of both glass and ceramic. Having researched and attended the lecture about the Bronze Age I became inspired by the specific technique of casting, which was used in the Bronze Age to cast swords and other weapons. As an artist my main interest is in glass and so I wanted to use this opportunity to explore the idea of glass casting. As well as exploring this I also wanted to explore through ceramic as ceramic is also a material I find interesting to use. Through researching I became interested in the shields of the Bronze Age, the patterns and techniques used to create them, and repoussé as a decorative technique.
I wanted to take this idea into ceramic trying to create a repoussé effect in the clay. The stages of the clay at leather hard were very important in the process in order to get the description to stand out as in metal repoussé. I also used the burnishing technique and inlay using white slip. I took the idea of the repoussé technique into glass, impressing the motifs into a solid clay mould which was then used for the making of the cast glass sphere.
