Case Study 3: Brick-a-Brack

Goals: To introduce a secondary material to the “hot glass” production process, find the right balance between rough and refined & offer a high value item at a very accessible price point.

Inspiration: “We were learning about working with cast hot glass, seeking to integrate it with other materials. I was looking at cobblestone roads, rough hewed lumber, shabby chic.”

Started: August 2012 Introduced in Spring 2013

First Drawing:

The supplier had standard sized chips that defined the primary chip field. To augment this, I sought to introduce smaller “skinny” chips, keeping the emphasis on the base, hot glass chips.

We explored the thinner chips as potentially being other materials, like raised glass, metal, stone, and even wood.

Development, Base Color:

This source had just developed a new range of opaque colors. I worked w/ them to make three color groups of very warm, semi-warm and semi cool. Further, I worked with them to make five shades (from light to dark) with-in each color group.

This set us up to explore stone and metal ranges.

Development of “Skinny” Elements:

The thinner chips needed to be calm, yet special. For the calm we looked at a dozen stone colors. Bright metals were reviewed to add the special element. However the cost of true metal put the collection above our target price.

With a little ingenuity, we took the glass and back textured it and over melted it so a rounded effect would occur. We then added a reflective coating to this particular thin chip solving the need for true metal.

Collection:

The finished collection came in four colorations and two grids. The colorations can be described as two light and two dark, of which two are warm tones and two are cool tones.

Post Script:

We received a very positive response at Coverings 2013. We sold this for years, but ultimately discontinued it as we introduced newer collections.