People sometimes ask how I get from point A to point B – what happens first with a new design, and how do I get to the finished piece? This is how…

Like a lot of my work, this piece started with a conversation. My clients were working on a major home renovation, including an overhaul of the kitchen space. They had seen my on-line portfolio, and liked the sunflower enough to order two for a piece of custom cabinetry. I paid them a visit to take measurements, and got the house tour.

My clients loved the look and color the finished sunflowers brought to the room. So we moved forward with a second design for a set of cabinet doors, 38 inches tall, with a run of 8 feet. That’s a lot of glass.

We talked about abstract images, but decided on something more traditional. A landscape, executed in glass. That took me into the research stage.

I came back with some books of landscape windows by Lewis Comfort Tiffany, and that helped nail down a style. Most of this Tiffany-type glass is still being manufactured, too, so we could stay very close to that feel. We wanted colors that would tie the cabinet into the color scheme of the room, which led us toward the sunset motif and helped determine the color of the border elements.

The next step was to produce a scale drawing of a Tiffany influenced landscape, colored and shaded by hand.

 

This serves as a “blueprint” for the client’s approval, and I always keep things on the drawing board until everyone is happy.

Once the drawing is approved, it’s time to go glass shopping, which is one of my favorite parts of the job. For this piece, it was a day and a half of treasure hunting, looking for just the right pieces, with just the right color values, to make the final work come alive.

The drawing is scanned and enhanced to produce full-size patterns. On this work, I also needed the computer to adjust for the wooden cabinet elements, so the landscape would appear seamless even when split into six discrete sections.

From there, it’s straightforward craft work. The glass is cut and soldered, the panels assembled and the individual sections installed. The construction was planned to run over several weeks, but I was having so much fun with it, that I finished way ahead of schedule.

And the most important part is that my clients loved the results as much as I did.

STEP BY STEP

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