Art Glass by Jeff Price

Click to view heart paperweights by Jeff Price

Artist Info:

Jeff Price is a second-generation glass blower. Both of his parents participated in the early days of the Studio Glass Movement (the 1960s) and went on to work in glass for many years. From them he learned much about form and color, as well as experiencing the excitement of working with glass from an early age. He also studied four years under master glassblower Rhys Williams. Jeff's extensive experiments with glass, both its forming and coloring techniques, have lead to a style of glass that features semi-traditional shapes with clever optical effects and bold colors. Pieces sometimes look like abstract paintings, sometimes like rustic remnants of a by-gone era, and often look like modern interpretations of classical art.

About the glass:

Silver Glass Colors

It’s hard to believe, but ALL of the colors you see in Jeff’s silver glass are due only to silver. Silver is unique in this regard, as most other colorants, such as iron (green) and manganese (purple), give only one color.

Why is silver so different? Because the colors you see are due to light reflecting off of minute crystals of silver that have separated out from the body of the glass. The typical size of these crystals is 10-4 (that’s 0.0001) inches. As a result of their tiny sizes, each crystal reflects only one color of light – depending on the exact size of that particular crystal. The smallest crystals reflect only purple, the next larger size reflects only blue and so forth, until you get to the largest size, which reflects only red. If there is a mixture of crystal sizes in a given area, you get various amounts of all of the colors, and this gives brown.

How do those tiny crystals of silver get into the glass? When Jeff is shoveling the sand into his furnace to make his glass, he adds from 2 to 4% of silver to it. After heating it to 2300° for a day, the silver dissolves into the glass. (No crystals yet).

Then when he removes that glass with his blowpipe to make a bowl or plate, for instance, the crystals grow very rapidly-within a few seconds to a minute.

Here’s the really interesting part: How large the crystals from depends upon the exact temperature of the glass and how long that temperature is held. Since the outside of a ball of hot glass heats and cools at a different rate than the inner part, the crystals on the outside of the ball will grow to a different size than those further in. As a matter of fact, if you think of a ball of glass as an “onion”, you see that each layer of the onion will generally heat and cool differently from all of the other layers. Thus each layer will reflect a different color of light.

As you can see, a piece of silver glass will never be just one color, but rather a mixture of colors in some random pattern. Thus every piece of silver glass is unique.

Calcedonio Glass:

This glass is called calcedonio because it was developed in Italy in 1460 to imitate the gemstone Chalcedony. Its method of manufacture was a closely guarded secret for 400 years. In 1856 Lorenza Radi discovered the secret ingredient: silver – lots of it. As a result, this glass is not only rather tricky to produce, but also quite expensive.

By combining additional ingredients with the silver, I have been able to create many combinations of colors that were unknown to those ancient Italians. And since the colors and patterns produced depend on many factors, including the exact heat treatment that each piece undergoes as it is being made, every piece has its own unique coloring and patterns.

If you like the art glass from Jeff Price, we think you'll also enjoy these artists…

Elodie Holmes, Robert Burch.