Using Fused Glass with Metal Clay
My knowledge about glass fusing is limited but a lot of the students that I have taught over the years are glass fusers. Naturally they wanted to combine their glass work with metal clay. In most cases they ended up constructing a bezel for their glass from low-shrinkage silver clay fired at a low temperature.
But how do we do this with base metal clay, which has to be fired in carbon? The temperature is too high for the glass and it gets pitted by the carbon (I have tried).
Here is my suggestion, and I would love to hear what you think about it and if you have further ideas: fire your copper and/or bronze piece first, leaving a space, or more than one space, for the glass. Then fill these spaces with your glass, and fuse it in open air as you would naturally do. There will be a black coat of oxidation on the surface of the metal, which can be removed by buffing or sanding.
You may get good results right away, but it is also possible that the glass will cab and pull away from the walls of the space in which it is laid. In this case, add more glass, or just clear glass, and re-fuse.
Here are the first results of my student, Ann, who experimented with this technique:
Glass fused in fired copper
It seems to me that this opens up a lot of possibilities. In many pieces of jewelry that combine glass and metal, the role of one of them seems less important. Sometimes the glass is just an accent in an elaborate metal construction, and sometimes the metal is just a frame for a beautiful glass cab. Using this technique of preparing the metal part first may make it possible to create pieces in which the glass and the metal play equal and complementary roles.
June 26th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
hmmm. i wonder if you coated the fired copper clay with boric acid solution, (or other available solutions) like you do when you are embedding copper in glass….if the copper wouldn’t oxydize as much..or would it turn red?
i have never used copper clay YET. guess i’d better try some!
June 26th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Hi Connie,
It might work. If the copper turns red, it’s really easy to buff it to its natural color. In any case, the oxidation is only on the surface since the firing is not that long. I’d love to see what you do with it!
Hadar
June 26th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Hadar, this really sparks my interest, because I’ve been thinking lately that all the fused glass stuff I see looks the same — until seeing this. Now, I want to try it, too.
-csc
June 27th, 2009 at 7:07 am
Hadar, thank you so much for this posting! I had just recently posted in Orchid hoping someone would have some experience with the new clays and fused glass. I figured you would have to use a prefired piece but didn’t know what to expect beyond that. I guess I will just have to jump in!
June 29th, 2009 at 11:20 am
This will probably work well for copper clay. How well it works for the bronze clay will depend on the COE of the Bronze–how close is it to the COE of copper?
January 8th, 2010 at 11:50 am
When fusing with silver clay (PMC) use either PMC+ or PMC3 only. If you fuse the glass first, you can then either set the glass INTO the PMC like you would a ring setting or you can cut out a space and set the glass that way. You need to make sure to put a rim around the glass to make sure it is secure. The glass will be slightly liquified when the PMC melts, making the glass even more secure. this technique will probably work the same for bronze and copper.