Search results (tags) for: "craftsmanship"

Etsy Finds: The New Old School

2009-06-23T12:00:00-05:00

There are many things in life that you can teach yourself: sewing a hem, making delicious hummus, and playing the harmonica are some accomplished examples. The do-it-yourself ethos runs deep and strong here on Etsy, but there's another facet to this creative treasure trove. Today's Etsy Finds are devoted to the traditional craftsmanship of yore, as viewed through a modern lens. These trades have traditionally been passed down through guilds and apprenticeships, keeping the handicraft skill sets alive and well to this day.

Ceramics and Pottery

Whether it's thrown, molded or cast, ceramics and pottery are a delight to observe (and carefully touch!). To learn more about this often utilitarian art form, check out our recent Facts and Fancies series on the subject.

Swiss Lamp in White

By jillrosenwald, $775.

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Blue Teapot

By lawatson, $175.

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Lace Bottle

By holepot, $1000.

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White Porcelain Fruit Bowl with Holes

By isabelleabramson, $350.

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Glass

Glass is one of the most ancient and time honored crafting traditions. Blown, stained or mosaic, glass making is a complex art form. Learn more about how glass is blown here.

Aqueous Stars

By leibenaller, $1250.

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Vivid Orange Blown Glass Vase

By corporanglass, $375.

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Damselfly

By TobyUptonGlass, $425.

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Biodiversity Sculpture

By AustinArtGlass, $575.

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Woodworking

Is there a more noble profession that that of the woodworker? The range of creations that can be hewn from a single tree is staggering. Furniture and musical instruments are but the tip of the iceberg.

Mahogany Butcher table

By attiladesign, $3200.

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Bamboo Electric Guitar

By liceaguitars, $1750.

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Large Flickering Lone Star Oak Table

By woodmosaics, $8500.

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Roll Top Desk - Available for commission

By janiesmash, $8600.

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Jewelry

These one of a kind pieces are sure to wow. Goldsmithing is a craft I wouldn't mind learning, if only for the decorative advantages (ahem, new rings weekly!).

Holding Hands Necklace

By margauxlange, $495.

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Papallona

By masaoms, $180.

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Large Spheres Knots Necklace

By SNoU, $625.

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Perelandrian Ring

By nanopod, $350.

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Leatherworking

Leather is such a malleable, yet durable, material. These pieces are sure to last a lifetime.

Grape Leaves and Tendrils Deluxe Cuff

By sunnyrising, $119.

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Leather in Antique Brown and Brass

By moxieandoliver, $750.

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Custom Red Retro Platform Pumps

By zerkahloostrah, $500.

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Nenjuu Leather Bag

By JMBCanada, $450.

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Fine Art

Etsy's Art Category holds countless aesthetic wonders. These gallery-worthy pieces are just a sampling.

Grace.

By jdmphotographs, $200.

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Original Oil - Made of the night

By thisisalliknow, $1600.

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Further West Metal Sculpture

By NoClassic, $285.

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How Is One.....

By olivamoon, $475.

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Fiber Art and Textiles

This collection encompasses the worlds of crochet, needlecraft, quilting, with some mixed media fiber art thrown in for good measure. The intricacy and attention to detail is awe-inspiring.

Beret21

By dadaya, $128.

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Moist Mother Earth

By TheFaerieMarket, $8000.

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Textile necklace nO.395

By kjoo, $280.

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Fallow Fields - Rag Quilt, Reversible

By wiccked, $599.

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You need not look very far to see all of the quality craftsmanship on Etsy! What's your favorite medium?

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Facts and Fancies: Borosilicate Glass with Firelily

2009-06-23T10:43:00-05:00

I am Erin Davenport, a.k.a. Firelily, full-time borosilicate glass and jewelry artist. Today I will give you a look inside the magical world of borosilicate glass and some of the amazing boro artists found here on Etsy.

I started as a jewelry maker and "boro" bead connoisseur. I couldn't get enough of them. The colors, depth and movement in such a small piece of glass took my breath away. I knew eventually I had to learn how to make them myself.

Borosilicate glass is most commonly known for being used to make sturdy kitchen cookware and measuring cups, such as Pyrex housewares, and also laboratory glassware such as beakers and test tubes. This is because it's very durable and hard — in techie terms, it has a very low thermal expansion coefficient (COE); about one third that of soft glass. Instead of the soda and lime components in soft glass, it contains at least 5% boron, making the resulting glass harder and more resistant to thermal shock.

Photo by Justin Parr on flickr.

Working with boro is just one type of lampworking, which means melting glass to make beads and sculptures. The process used to consist of melting glass with an oil lamp, hence the name. Today most artists use a torch.

The picture at right is of the boro glass rods, which are what we use to make the beads and sculptures; these are our raw supplies.

Able to be manipulated with gravity, tools, and blowing, borosilicate glass can be made into beads, pendants, marbles, ornaments, sculptural work and many other fantastic pieces of art. I focus on making beads and pendants, but you will find artists here on Etsy that wrap this glass on vintage skeleton keys such as Paula of venbead, or amazing sculptural pieces such as Pipyr of pipyr, or Kim of KimVGlass who makes gorgeous floral implosion pendants.

Borosilicate glass was developed in the late 1800s for technical purposes and very little happened with this glass artistically for quite some time. Originating from the scientific glass trade, gift shop novelty items made from borosilicate glass started to appear and may be what sparked an interest in enough people for the art form to take hold.

There still was only clear borosilicate glass available. Some artisans painstakingly painted the glass and few were able to get colors by hand mixing elements and minerals into the glass. There was also a class offered at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles in the 1960s by John Burton who had received a grant to teach creative lampworking to students. Some of the students strongly pursued the art and took it much further than Burton had, creating more interesting colors and sculptures.

Paul Trautman was shown this technique a few years later by one of Burton's students at Occidental College. During the next few years, Paul pursued his love for artistic lampworking, eventually developing color. He started out mixing the glass by hand in his garage, and the techniques he developed are still the basic industry standard. He would hand mix small batches of colored glass and when he had about a dozen different colors developed, he realized he might have a potential business on his hands. He offered some of this glass for sale through a popular glass supply store and the colored boro sold well. Hand mixing the glass for hours on end, he soon looked for an alternative. After an extensive research period, he founded Northstar Glassworks and began producing colored borosilicate glass in a pot furnace on a large scale, making it commercially available for the first time. He spent the next twenty-two years growing his color palette and the industry. In 2002, he sold Northstar and is currently creating some very exciting new colors under his new business, Trautman Art Glass. You can learn more about him and see his color palette at www.taglass.com.

This invention revolutionized the world of borosilicate glass art. There are now several other colored borosilicate glass companies that are producing commercially available glass, offering us artists a vast array of colors to choose from. Some stay true to their color, while some individual colors can potentially yield many different results with variation in flame chemistry. These reactive colors contain natural minerals and elements such as cobalt, copper, chrome, pure silver and manganese to name a few. The ingredients vary in saturation and combination, resulting in over 100 different colors available to us from a few manufacturers.

Some tools of the trade.

Like all glass art, another critical part of the process is kiln annealing. Borosilicate glass has its own unique annealing process, which can include holding at very precise temperatures for a set amount of time to achieve strength and durability. When I am done at the torch, the annealing process completes itself overnight. Sometimes I use the kiln to further develop the color of the pieces I have made. When I go out to the kiln in the morning it is like opening a present. To hold the finished piece in my hand that was molten and molded from my creativity the night before is hard to describe.

Trying to put the studio all together took a few months. The ventilation system, which is used to draw away toxic fumes, was the most complicated.

I am amazed every time I go out to the torch. I can often use the same rod to get a cool ocean blue set of beads, and then adjust the propane to oxygen ratio on my torch and create a nice earthy tan set of beads. Many of us need a creative outlet - to escape the pressures of daily life and reconnect with our spirit. At night, after the kids are all in bed and my daily duties are as done as they are going to get, I slip out to the glass studio in my garage and light the torch. Sometimes I have a plan in mind and sometimes I grab a random rod and see what I can make it do. Either way, I push myself to come up with new combinations and results. I hope you enjoy exploring the borosilicate glass artists here... They all have been captured by the mystery this glass has to offer.

Further Resources:
There are a few lampworking forums on the internet, one of them being www.lampworketc.com, that provided me with most of the information I needed to get started.

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Give a shout out in the comments if you love glass!

Fresh Shops: Fine Craftsmanship from wookwoodworking

2008-09-18T13:13:00-05:00

Have you ever looked at the Showcase and been totally captivated by an item? I recently found a Fresh Shop called wookwoodworking, a relatively new shop that opened in May, by clicking on this table. Gorgeous!

The craftsmanship caught my eye and took my breath away, so I contacted the shop, and it turns out Alexandra Snook and Ed Way are the duo behind wookwoodworking. Recently married, the couple had met 9 years prior at SUNY Purchase while studying furniture design, and as Alexandra puts it, "Since we met I can honestly say that no piece has been solely mine or Ed's." One of them will come up with an idea, which then gets passed back and forth four or five times before the piece is completed. This obviously works for them — their furniture is refined but inventive.

Interestingly, wookwoodworking not only offers amazing, high end furniture, but also very affordable buttons and magnets, all made from sustainably harvested local wood — Cherry, Maple, Oak, Birch, and Apple. They also offer trivets, salad tongs, cutting boards, and jewelry at a variety of price points.

"Our background is based in one-of-a kind studio furniture pieces and architectural work, but we recently started doing craft fairs and markets, and realized how inaccessible custom woodworking generally is. The inordinate amount of time and materials that go into our furniture pieces make selling anything for a reasonable price (meaning anything we could afford) near impossible.

Taking all of this into consideration, and wishing to offer people pieces that express our vision and craftsmanship, we began to come up with price points and corresponding pieces."

Although the craftsmanship they put into their pieces is rooted in "old world" honest hard work and some classic designs, they "wouldn't describe [their] work as overly modern or overly traditional, but believe it lies somewhere between the two." Asian architecture gives them inspiration, as well as "natural and organic forms and textures. Our work often employs split turning which is the process of turning a piece of wood on a lathe and then splitting it afterward resulting in identical pieces."

They kiln-dry all of their tree buttons, which means they won't shrink, crack or warp as the wood ages. The attention to detail, even in their smaller pieces, inspires me to learn more about woodworking!

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