| Original Message: Welcome glass melter Brian! |
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Nice post Brian, It's good to see other glass melters out there doing experimental work and interested in beads too. We always had chrome in our green glass-the ratio of the copper /chrome analog varying the shades of green. I don't recall that we included iron in our green batches but it's possible. My days with batch melting are long ago. Iron was surely present in all the older glasses to a greater rather than lesser degree due to materials refinement issues. I've don't recall reading of iron content being a factor in aventurine or hematinone development but could see where it might play a part. I haven't had the chance to obtain or read the Neri treatise and since you've read it I expect that you are more informed on Italian practice than I on the matter. I've seen iron reds in pottery glazes and in some glass. Your copper blue is an excellent presentation of a pure copper blue. I made an attempt at copper aventurine once with very similar results to the pics you showed, but you got better sparkly than I did. Mine was marbly as well with green and red present. It was a one time experiment. We did make chrome green aventurine on occasion and it's much more direct and easier to get the crystal formation in that glass than the copper version. The green aventurine seemed much more stable at working temperature too. I no longer melt much raw batch as it got to be taking up too much time and space and the energy issues are not insignificant.
The biggest point I may have failed to make in my previous post about glass colorants and coloring is that while some common colors are generated by adding a colorant to a base glass ie. manganese purple, copper blue, copper chrome greens,cobalt blue, nickel ambers etc. sophisticated colors in glass notably all the hot colors( reds, yelllows etc. ) are created by very complex conditions created within the glass matrix at an atomic level by subtle chemistry interactions , temperature, time and atmosphere. These colors aren't made by adding a colorant to a base glass akin to adding food color to water.
What kind of glass objects do you make? Do you have a website? or a link to pics of your work?
Here's to more and better glass in beads and other objects...
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