Emmie's bowl

Emeludt’s Bowl

By Marion Campbell

Windmasters Hill.

I was commissioned to create a bowl for Emueludt’s pelican ceremony. The person who commissioned it asked that it have purple and yellow in the bowl and that it was based on a 14th century German piece.

The piece it was based on is below, it is in the MET Cloisters collection. Dated between 1480 and 1510, German or Netherlands free blown with decoration size 2 1/8in x 31/4 in or 5.4 x 8.3 cm

 So I started to create a bowl based on a cup, the cup has very large Prunts or dabs of glass on the side with a 2 sectioned shape.

I started by doing a 2 gather bowl,  blowing a small wide bubble and putting in the Jack line to be able to transfer it.  I asked my assistant to being large gathers of purple to add the prunts, I cut the prunts using diamond shears close to the bowl trying to make them large as possible and keeping them on the bottom 1/2 of the bowl. By cutting the prunt close to the bowl the prunt is flatter.  I placed 4 purple prunts and then added the 4 yellow prunts between them.  My assistant re heated the prunt and added more glass to the bottom after each cut so that they looked to be solid purple or yellow as needed

We then flattened the bottom of the bowl so that it had a flat surface to sit on. Once we flattened the bottom using a wooden paddle. We then did a Wrap on the bottom using a bit of clear glass with purple frit on it to create the purple wrap. The wrap was applied to the edge of the bottom, then my assistant used a paddle to flattened the bottom as I used a tagelo to keep the wrap out from the side of the bowl but to make sure it was attached.

We then transferred the bowl to the punty and worked on the lip. The original was flared at the top and had straight walls at the bottom. I started to flare the top some but kept it from flaring as much as the original since we had a size limitation of the glory hole could only open so large to re-heat the item while we were working on it.

If I was to do this piece again I would work on getting the sides of the bottom part of the bowl straighter before adding the prunts, once the prunts where added I could not straighten the walls.

Glossery:

Gather:  the number of times molten glass is put on the blow pipe. It is a generic starting size of glass.

Jack line: the area near the blow pipe where a crease is put using jacks to allow the piece to be transferred

Jacks: bladed tongs use to shape hot glass.

Prunt: dabs of hot glass placed as decoration on a price using a Punty  rod to gather and shape the glass before placing.

Punty: a metal rod used to gather glass for decoration or to make a small dab of glass at the bottom to transfer the piece so that you can work on the lip or top of the piece.

Wrap: a small trail of glass added to a piece that goes all the way around the piece.

Tagelo: Italian for a flat metal tool used to shape and sculpt  hot glass.

Glory hole: the furnace use to re-heat glass while working it.