My name is Katharine Coleman I've been a glass engraver for 35 years at least.
I started as a hobbyist going to evening classes, it was through that grounding
that I started doing conventional glass engraving on clear glass,
on commercial glass, but what I really loved doing was making glass that had colour overlay
on it so that I could cut through layers of colour to make an interesting design.
There are things that you can do with glass that you can't do with any other material. Glass seems
like water and air so things that fly, birds, fish – I've done a lot of fish – but on the
other hand architecture has fascinated me because glass is used a lot in modern architecture and
because it's transparent and you're looking through windows you get these illusions of
looking through one window into another into the next. I've always used museums,
their collections are a wonderful source of inspiration. I've always been interested to
see how other generations have interpreted design on glass, the Roman the Victorian the Edwardian,
and the V&A collection is a superb study collection for that very good reason.
I always keep these little books in my bag with me wherever I go. When I'm getting ideas together
I have to think of a group of work that would look well together, so I spend some time having doodles
in my little notebook designing a whole body of work and then I will do careful drawings, pencil
drawings, so that I understand how for instance a ginkgo leaf works, until I've got the feel of it.
A glass blank is a term for the glass when it's been blown but it hasn't been engraved yet,
so a piece for instance like this is what I would call a glass blank. It looks as if it's
solid green glass, if it was solid green glass it would look black like a Marmite pot, this is
clear lead crystal with less than a millimetre of green glass lying on the outside surface.
I have my glass blanks blown for me by a glass blower who's particularly skilled at doing
colour overlay. Loads of people say they can do overlay but very few can do overlay fine enough
for my uses, it's immensely skillful. When I'm setting up a piece I'll draw the whole design on
the glass so that I can see how it's going to work not only round the piece but inside the piece and
so I work around it drawing on, rubbing away, adjusting until I'm satisfied with the design.
Once you've got the design exactly where you want it you can fix it on using a drill,
I've got a little micro motor drill with a little diamond-covered tip.
I cut away the background using sintered diamond wheels with a
water drop on my lathe quickly stripping it away.
It's a phosphor bronze compound with diamonds set in it, it's quick and efficient, the problem
with it is it's a bit expensive and it produces a rather rougher surface even with a fine diamond.
Wheel engraving isn't used widely in Britain anymore, I should think there are about 10
practitioners maximum now. The people left who can do copper wheel engraving,
which is the finest technique of the lot, there's about five of us maximum left in the country
it's becoming a dying craft in Britain but it's still highly-prized because
there's a certain sort of engraving that is very handsome when it's
done with a wheel that you can't imitate so easily with the drill.
This is what a copper wheel looks like.
It's not the copper that does the cutting, copper is a soft metal
and that's the secret of its success, if you put a grit and oil paste on it,
it's the grit and oil stick sufficiently to the copper long enough to cut the glass.
It's a form of technology that goes back to Babylonian times, even the pyramids were
cut with copper saws with grit and oil and it's amazing what you can cut with copper.
I work as hard as I can which is usually about a 10 to 12 hour day sometimes if I'm under pressure
for an exhibition. I love doing it still I'm making work for exhibition and for my own pleasure
I'm
wanting
everyone to forget that there's glass there so
they get this illusion of one body or object floating inside another.