Terri-Louise Colledge and Ian Bamforth

A slow drive into work today, don’t know what’s going on maybe it’s just one of those Tuesday things. Maybe it’s just about the timing. Peak periods and all that…

As you walk up the steps at the front of the Ruskin Glass Centre building, the first studio that you come to before entering the building is the Stourbridge Glass Blowing Studio. Two large windows allow you to see just what’s going on inside, sometimes it’s a real hive of activity with lots of quick moving around by a glass blower and assistants, other times it can be one of the guy’s charging the furnace. This time it was Ian Bamforth sitting at his laptop. I went to have a quick chat with Ian about some work he was doing, and looked at his latest work, a couple of Pink/Red folded rim bowls, one was a commission, the other a for sale.

This piece was to have engraved words around the outside. A dozen words of a child that hasn’t quite grasped how to say them, you know what I mean, their own version that we sometimes start adopting to have a conversation with the little one. One of the words was “Gan Gan” I was told that this his Gran.

Quite a neat way of keeping those first words immortalised. Ian told me that Terri-Louise Colledge was going to hand engrave the words into the bowl, so I found out that Terri was starting the engraving the following day.

So this morning, that’s what I’m up to, watching Terri-Louise set up her workstation. She had been doing some painting on glass, and number of pieces, some were commissions and others were pieces to test the market, I'll put some pics in later..

Click on the pictures to enlarge them..
 

 



Terri-L marking out the words

 

 

A run through the first word on a test piece, just to get the tools working right..

 

 

 

The first word...

 

 

This is the type of work that you can normally find Terri-Louise doing, Cameo glass, where she carves away the outer white skin of the glass to reveal the blue..notice the small piece to the right of the vase..very beautiful and highly prized...

 

 

 

This is how most people see Terri-Louise, through her shop window.

 

 

and this was what she was working on later that day, painting on glass. Later it will be fired to bond the paint to the glass..

 

 

That day, Ian was working in the cold workshop, helping out with some decanters.

Diamond cutting to fit the tops..

 

 

Here is some of Ian's work, in the Hot Glass blowing shop, he's usually found in here 4 - 5 days a week, glass blowing. Other times people rent out the studio to make their own work.

 

 

Here's the finished piece, Ian made the glass, Terri did the engraving..

 

one happy customer..

 

This was just a snippet of what goes on, in any one day at the Ruskin Glass Centre. Ian then gets back to his glass blowing and workshops. Terri-Louise carries on making cameo glass and painted glassware..

 

 

I'm off to get on with my work now.

 

Next time Phil Potter.

 

all the best

 

Jamie