glass art

January 27, 2024January 27, 2024

Color Story: Gems + Jewel Tones (part 1)

Beyond just decoration, color is elemental.

Think of mineral pigments. The way a body of water takes on shades of what it carries – a cloudy blue glacial stream, a teal bay concealing a forest of kelp, a river that turns mud-brown with sediment. The hue of flames shifting from fuel and temperature changes. Or the impact of heat and chemical makeup on the color of lava, of aurora, of stars.

The rich, saturated colors of rubies, emeralds, sapphires, amethysts, and other gemstones are actually from trace elements within them. It’s those so-called imperfections that create the gorgeous palette we call jewel tones.

With Tucson’s gem show season beginning today, it seemed like the perfect time to explore jewel-toned things to make, places to visit, handmade items to shop, and nature to marvel at.

In fact, I found so many gems to share with you that there will be a Part 2!

1. Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula, as seen through Webb Telescope filters. / public domain composite image via NASA and Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) / in case you’re wondering: “How Are Webb’s Full-Color Images Made?” + “Where Colors in Telescope Images Come From”

2. Mineral from “one of the world’s finest collections of crystals” in the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals in Hillsboro, Oregon.

3. Interstellar Collection clay earrings handmade in Tucson by Little Rabbit Jewelry.

4. My photo of the fantastical Gila monster/Quetzalcoatl dragon mural that Jessica Gonzales created for Amazing Discoveries game store in Tucson.

5. Fluorite Obelisk made from natural crystal by Liz Creation Studio.

6. Monarch butterfly mosaic made on sustainable birchwood by Lantern Press Artwork.

7. Tossing Mardi Gras beads from a balcony in New Orleans. / via MardiGrasNewOrleans.com / History of throwing trinkets to Mardi Gras crowds.

8+9. Balsamic goat cheese pasta with roasted beets. / via Half-Baked Harvest

10. Looking up at the cut-gem shape of the ceiling of the Byrd Theatre in Richmond, Virginia. / photo by Florence Womack

11. Fruit and Tonics: Recipe for giant, fruit-infused ice cubes that will give your drink more flavor as they melt instead of watering it down! / Add to gin and tonics, plain sparkling water, lemonade, or a pitcher of sangria. / via A Beautiful Mess

12. Sari Silk Cushion Cover made from vintage fabric in Jaipur, India by TheCraftmanship.

13. Free printable for making watercolor paper gems. / via We Are Scout

14. Prickly pear juice handcrafted by Desert Forager’s John Slattery. / At Tucson Meet Yourself, he was hustling to ring up beverage orders on one side of his booth while selling and signing his book, Southwest Foraging, on the other! / Return the jar your drink is served in for a discounted refill.

15. Traditional Palestinian Costume: Origins and Evolution by Hanan Karaman Munayyer, a beautiful book I borrowed recently.

16. Lanterns to celebrate Buddha’s birthday (Vesak Day) in Seoul, South Korea. / via Huffington Post

17. Hand-cut glass bottle wind chimes made by Bottles Uncorked. / You can order a set of all 10 colors or choose a single bottle.

18. BIRDLOVER Guatemalan Huipil Blouse, handwoven and embroidered by Doña Juana, a Mayan weaver in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala. It was a 6-month long project! / via Mayan Artisans on Etsy

Photos link to their sources. This post contains Etsy affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission on purchases – at no extra cost to you! Win-win!

March 18, 2021March 18, 2021

Clover Color Story

Somewhere in the neighborhood of Kelly green, a bit lighter than emerald, you’ll find Clover. It’s the color of lots of leafy growing things and glass bottles, and it brings an eye-catching vibrancy anywhere you add it.

A few places and projects that look great in this green…

1. Jungle Garden at the Huntington Library in Southern California. / from our 2016 Pasadena trip

2. Tips for building an A-frame Cabin on UO Journal. / Photo: Carey Quinton Haider

3. Embroidered aerial views of the British countryside by Victoria Rose Richards. / via @chromato_mania / +See more modern embroidery projects.

4. Cauliflower tacos we enjoyed at The Coronado in Phoenix. (They’re delicious!) / from a date day in 2019

5. Assemble-it-Yourself wind chime kit from an artist who makes beachy glass bottle sculptures, jewelry, and wind chimes in the Florida panhandle. / via Lifting Up Spirits / +More wind chimes you can make.

6. Decorating with statement leaves by Justina Blakeney. / via The Jungalow

7. The Secret of Kells poster by Jessica Seamans. This is her interpretation of the film (which I haven’t seen yet), and I love its detail and rich shades of green! / via Mondo

8. Clever paper cacti printables! / via The Crafted Sparrow / +More cactus crafts.

9. La Bobia restaurant, Madrid. / from an extended layover on the way back from Italy

10. Tips for freezing jalapeño peppers. / via Pepper Geek

11. A rowboat (adorably) called the “Toad.” These are made in a village northwest of London by a family that has been making and selling small boats for over 40 years. / via Heyland Marine

12. DIY faux-leather pouches project and tutorial by Claire Brander. / via Fellow Fellow on the Internet Archive

13. Delightful handcut paper plants and flowers by Tania Lissova in Tyumen, Russia. She sells prints of her work on posters, cards, and stickers – as well as her original pieces – in her Etsy shop. / via Lissova Craft

14. Neat pattern with dimensional hexagon tiles from the Atomic Subway Tile series, crafted in the Midwestern U.S. / via Heritage Tile

15. The World After Us: Imaging techno-aesthetic futures is an art exhibition that looks at the way growing things might take over our discarded tech in the far future. It features plants and fungi sprouting from electronics like laptops, keyboards, and phones. / via Nathaniel Stern

Photo sources are included in their descriptions. All the photos I took were from before the pandemic.

January 11, 2019January 11, 2019

House of Glass

For the past eighty years, the St. Clair-Rice family has been crafting art glass using techniques passed down through generations.

I remember seeing this St. Clair Glass on the kitchen counters and shelves and window sills of my dad’s side of the family since I was a kid. It comes from the same place they do: Madison County, Indiana.

Of course, the people and the glass have made their way across the country, moving for better jobs or better weather or bigger cities. Our family’s business used to be farming, but, even the relatives that stayed in the region left the farms years ago.

Every so often when I was growing up, my family would make kind of a pilgrimage from our home in Arizona to visit our Indiana family. Sometimes we’d visit the St. Clair glass factory (The House of Glass) in Elwood.

The showroom had shelves and tables stuffed full of lamps and vases, and so many paperweights — palm-sized sculptures shaped like birds, bells, baskets, apples, and angels with a landscape of colorful glass inside their clear exteriors. Each one was made by hand in the on-site workshop.

My parents would buy gifts to bring back for the friend who collected apple things or the one who was dog-sitting while we were away.

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You could see new pieces in progress, molten glass glowing from the heat of the furnace as the artist turned it and added color and shaped it into something you could recognize. It was like magic.

And it still was when we visited Madison County a few years ago. The store shelves were more sparse, but through the back door in the sweltering workshop, artist-owner Joe Rice was still firing the glass by hand.

Even then, he was concerned that he hadn’t been able to find an apprentice. Like my great-grandparents’ farm, there wasn’t anyone willing and able to take on the work long term.

As he used a long metal pole to heat up the liquid that would become a teapot-shaped ring holder, Joe Rice (who sometimes signs his work “Joe St. Clair,” using his mother’s maiden name) explained how it wasn’t just that he didn’t have a successor, there were few glass makers out there who could match both their production numbers and commitment to flawless glasswork.

And now there are even fewer.

Joe Rice announced last year he’d be closing up shop at the end of 2018, limiting his work to only select projects.

I still hope that one day soon someone will have the passion to learn his trade and fire up the furnace again.

August 29, 2015August 29, 2015

7 Things You Didn’t Expect to Find in Madison County, Indiana

There’s a view that the middle of the U.S. is nothing but farm fields.

Drive an hour or so northeast of the of the Indianapolis Airport, and you’ll find yourself in Madison County (not the one with the bridges). It has its share of agriculture, for sure, but there are also cultural and historical sites, and people passionate about things they make.

I bet you didn’t know you could find all this in Madison County, Indiana:

1. A performing arts theater that makes you feel like you’re sitting in a Spanish courtyard under a starry sky. The Paramount Theatre Centre is one of only a handful of remaining atmospheric theaters by architect John Eberson.

2. Large, 2000-year-old heaps of earth built up by mysterious ancient people(s) to align with heavenly bodies at Mounds State Park.

3. Free public wifi throughout downtown Anderson (the county seat), thanks to dozens of hotspots. (PDF map)

4. The House of Glass, a family-run artisan glass studio, which still crafts each piece by hand in the tradition of their French ancestors.

5. A gospel music recording studio that also serves insanely good house-made cakes, Pure & Simple Restaurant at Gaither Family Resources. (Phillip wants me to add that the pot roast skillet was also delicious. So was the chicken bacon mac and cheese.)

6. The first historic district to be added to the National Register of Historic Places – West Eighth Street Historic District. (Walking tour map)

7. The world’s largest ball of paint, a baseball that’s been coated in more than 24,000 layers of paint over the last 37 years and now weighs over 4,000 pounds.

Where to Stay

Our homebase while we explored Madison County was a suite at the conveniently-located Best Western Plus in Anderson, which included breakfast every morning and coffee all day. (Yeah!)

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A big thank you to Anderson Madison County Visitor and Convention Bureau! We were their guests at the Best Western Plus and at Pure & Simple Restaurant. But I wasn’t kidding about that cake.