Color Bars: A rod of solid colored glass, available in a myriad of transparent or opaque colors. These rods are usually about one inch in diameter, about 12 inches long and weigh about one half of a kilo.

The glass artist will cut the rod into smaller pieces (1 to 6 inches long depending on the size of the finished piece and the intensity of color that is required) and preheats them in the annealer.

When he is ready to start making a hand blown glass object, he pre heats the blow pipe, gets a small amount of clear glass on the end of the pipe, then "picks up" the preheated piece of color bar on the end of the pipe, melts it in the glory hole, shapes it and then blows a small bubble in the colored glass.

This is the most important step in the whole process…it's like the foundation of a house; it must be strong and balanced. After that, clear glass is layered over the color.

Glass: We use a glass specifically designed to be melted in an electric glass melting furnace. The glass is soda lime barium crystal and it comes to us in 400 lb. barrels. Inside are hundreds of marble sized white pellets. (they look just like moth balls!)

Since the glass has already been "cooked" at the factory where it is produced, it releases no harmful fumes during the melting process and is totally environmentally friendly.

Frit: This is the same colored glass as the bars only it is crushed into varied sizes ranging from very fine to very coarse chunks. The frit is usually laid out on the marvering table and picked up into the hot glass by rolling over it.

Powder: This is colored glass frit ground into fine powders.