Update

It's been awhile. For the benefit of those of you who don't blow glass.... a brief explanation. The glory hole (the round drum-looking thing that you reheat the piece you are working on) normally runs at about 2300 to 2500 degrees. When you get ready to blow glass you light it and turn it on. I goes from ambient temperature (whatever temperature it is outside) to the operating temperature. You blow glass for however long. (2 - 5 hours) You shut it down. It returns to ambient temperature. Those kinds of extreme fluctuations cause expansion and contraction. Over time, (in my case, about 2 years) the insulating material in the glory hole cracks and falls apart. That's what happened to me. I ordered another "liner" from Denver glass. Micah and I installed it. It was easier than I thought. After doing this, we were feeling so good about ourselves, we did something that was long over due. We got rid of a bunch of clutter and reorganized the glass studio. We outdid ourselves. It's still not perfect, but it's pretty good. I had a bunch of color that hadn't been organized and bottled and labeled. We did that. We installed shelving (that I had bought at an auction about 9 months ago and wondered if I would ever use it.) to hold all the glass color, in frit and rod form. I had more color than I thought I did. Here is a picture. Click on it to get the full import. We may start blowing tomorrow. Maybe not. We have been finishing creating Italian Jim's Website also. Next we are going to have a official website for Bella Forte Glass studio. Going to try to promote sales of lighting and art from there. I don't know exactly. Maybe not. We are going to try to showcase the different things we do.
Catch you later.

New lamps, blue set, yellow platter

Christmas Stuff

More Photos of the New Glass

Some new things

I want to thank everyone who has come and bought glass! We have sold more this Christmas than ever before! Heap big thanks!

Here's some stuff we have blown recently. Some were custom orders, some were pieces we just wanted to blow.

Another Installation

Here's another installation at Bill and Chris' house that we blew.

New Installation

Here's the installation I was mentioning a post or two ago. We are doing both windows. We have 21 pieces on the "left side" and I assume it will be about the same on the other side when we get it done. The pictures are show pretty much the order of events once we got the pieces blown and drilled and arrived at the installation site. It took us part of a couple of days to get it done. As you can see we were welding into the night on day one and finished the installtion in about an hour and a half a couple of days later during the daytime. As you can tell we did a mock up as we went along. After we had everything set up like we wanted it, we took a photo and then disassembled and painted the mounting hardware. Then a couple of days later we looked at the photo to tell us which platter went where and then installed it accordingly.

New Brochure for Bella Forte

Here is that brochure. Took 3 more trys to get it downloaded. I need to take lessons from Gnat.
This is a 2nd draft - I have at least one more tweak to do on it.

Response to Gnat: I have the before pictures already - once I get it done then I will put them all together. (if it looks good) If it looks bad you will never see me mention it again. Ha Ha but true.
Thanks,
Chris M.

Hello again

I have been really busy. We have blowing a little bit of glass.

Micah had his third surgery on his retina. He's still recovering.

We are doing an installation of about 25 - 30 platters way up high on 2 triangular windows in a vaulted entry of a brand new home. The entry faces east. When the sun comes up, it will shine through the platters and reflect and refract off the walls and ceiling across the the entry and into the living room. It is going to be beautiful! We are having to fabricate steel frame work to mount the platters. Kind of a fairly good-sized job. We are excited.

We have some really big news coming up in the relatively near future. Can't really go into it yet but as soon as I can I will let everybody know. Really BIG!!!!

I'll try to get that brochure to upload later.

Thanks
Chris M.

New Brochure

Just tried to upload the new brochure
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S'more stuff

Thanks to all who came to the art show @ OCCC last weekend. We sold quite a bit of glass.

Detached Retina!

Yes, that's the words we heard this past Monday concerning Micah's eye. As most of you know Micah's eye was injured severly this past January and his retina was patially detached. After emergeny surgery and some time things were looking postive. However lately, he began having vision problems again which led to a doctor's appoint on Monday, which is where we heard those 2 words again. So surgery on Thursday and another space of time to recover. We just thank God that recovery is an option! Haven't blown anything or done any glass in last 2 or 3 weeks. Will be doing some soon.
Will write later. Bye.

New Work