Desert Blue

After working on a Series called Desert Collection for a while, I started replacing the white on the inside with Aqua Blue. The earthy feel of the desert colors is complimented and rendered more alive by the color and feel of water. I still use the original Desert Collection scheme, but mainly in lighting projects. The original Desert Blue series has horizontal lines, the inevitable outcome of spinning a string of glass around a ball of glass that's at the end of a blow pipe. In my mind's eye, I have seen the pieces with vertical lines for a long time and I finally decided to put in the extra work to reverse the pattern. This requires me to create an extra hole in the side of my ball after wrapping the string of orange around it. I then have to attach a second blowpipe to the new hole, break off the first pipe and close the resulting opening. After equalizing the wall thickness, which is distorted by the whole process, I can begin inflating and shaping the piece. Glassblowers refer to this process as 'Reversing the Access' and it adds between 45 minutes to an hour to the creation of the piece.