How it's Made: Art Glass Flower Marble

by Daniel Bourgeois
     So, you want to make a flower marble. But you don't know anything about anything when it comes to glass. Well I've got the guide for you! (And maybe I even know what I'm talking about) This isn't meant to really be instructional, more of a general overview for someone who's curious about how I make my flower marbles.
      A lot of people think I make the flowers and then somehow shove them inside the glass, but this couldn't be further from the truth. Together, we're going to grow a flower inside the glass! Sounds exciting right? Let's get started.
     First you're going to start with a large glass rod and heat it up until you form a large ball.

 


     
     Next press it down on a flat surface until it's flat - this is called a maria. Begin drawing squiggly circular lines on it with another rod of colored glass.

 

 

 

 

     Heat the edges of the maria up until the surface is concave, then press it flat again. 

 

 

 

 

     Begin adding more circular squiggly lines. Heat up the edges and press it down flat. Keep repeating this process until you have as many layers as you want for the final flower. It's really coming to life now! 

 






    Let's look at the other side to see how we're doing. This is the most exciting part: watching the flower grow inside the glass.

 

 

 

 

     Next we start to shape it into a marble:

 

 

 

     Finally, we attach a glass rod to the other end, melt off the rod that was attached, and shape the other side into a marble. We place the final marble into the kiln to anneal. What this means is that because it's been exposed to the flame, the outside surface of the marble is extremely hot while the inside is much cooler. We place it inside the kiln to allow the marble to reach a constant temperature throughout. You can read more about annealing by clicking here.

     After about 5-6 hours we can open the kiln and view the final product!

 

 

     Ok, so maybe you're saying to yourself: ok, that's great, but I can tell Dan (that's me) is skipping a whole bunch of steps here. I want to know what happens EVERY SINGLE SECOND of the process; I'm not some spectator, I want to know how to actually make a flower marble.

     I'm not going to even try to reinvent that wheel, since the very excellent John Kobuki has a nearly flawless video of the entire process which you can view below. Beware it's almost an hour long, so you gotta be really into lampworking to actually sit through this. 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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