Getting A Head

David prepares the colours with which he will decorate one of his quirky glass heads then pre-heats the punty rod.

He dips the punty into the crucible of hot glass and gathers a blob of glass (a gather) then rolls the gather on the marver to get a shape, reheats the glass, spreads some coloured glass powder on the marver, and rolls the glass on the punty to pick up the colour.

He heats the glass to melt in the colour, gathers more glass, shapes it on the marver, reheats, then flattens the glass on the marver with a wooden paddle, which he made.

“Snip some cuts in the top of the head to look like hair using garden shears, reheat the glass, push indents into the face so it will accept eyes, nose, and mouth, put in the eyes, nose, and mouth, reheat the glass, stretch the neck to give you something to mount the head with, then reheat the glass. Put a stress point between the punty and the neck using diamond shears then go to the knock-off box, where you tap the punty with a piece of wood to fracture the stress point so the head breaks away from the punty.”

Wearing a face mask and thick leather gloves. he picks up the head with a pair of modified tongs and transfers it to the annealing oven, where it will cool from around 800°C to room temperature over 36 hours.