Blown Glass Ornaments by Shannon Jane Morgan
Ornament artist Shannon Jane Morgan began exploring color years ago, and as you can see from the beautiful images above, she has mastered her passion for vivid colors and glass blowing. Walking into her studio and viewing her glass ornaments, paper weights, vases, goblets and bowls is like watching a rainbow explode into wonderful splashes of color. With such a delightful display of Shannon’s feminine touch, her website is very appropriately named GirlGlass.com.
Shannon says that the actual process of physically making blown glass is rather demanding, taking years to learn, but it’s the art of sharing something made by hand in a short moment that starts out as a “blob” and turns into something stunning a few steps later that keeps her working in this grueling medium. A combination of passion, desire, drive, color, 2200 hundred degrees of molten glass and hand tools that have been literally unchanged for thousands of years are some of the ingredients of her art. She makes glass according to tradition and she definitely has her own flair for color. She follows the traditional steps almost as a meditation at times, repeating the steps every day and ending up with a unique ornament each time she takes the steps that glass blowers have taken since the early Egyptians.
At Girl Glass studios, Shannon gathers glass out of a furnace, rolling the medium in a pattern of colored chips (frit), melting those into the surface of glass, and reheats the glass every 30 seconds or so to maintain viscosity. She then shapes the ornament on a marver table, reheats it again and introduces her own air into the blow pipe which expands the glass. After shaping the ornament again, she reheats it and returns to the gaffer’s bench to complete the piece using a small blow hose. Once this part of the process is complete, she bonks the little ornament off of the blow pipe and returns to the furnace one more time to gather a very small bit of glass that will be quickly added to the top of the ornament to close the small air hole left behind and providing a way to hang the ornament in a tree or window or on an ornament stand for year round display. The final step is to place the ornament in a lehr with a temperature of 920 degrees. All of the ornaments are collected in this heated insulated box, and when the day is done the box is turned off to cool slowly. The next morning – just like Christmas – Shannon opens the door, excited to see the works from the day before. She says that she taught herself long ago to just take a moment first thing upon opening the lehr to simply enjoy her art without any judgement. She tells us that in those moments of appreciation and perhaps awe, she connects with her passion for color and beauty, and that gives her what it takes to start the equipment back up and repeat the process all over again.
Shannon Jane Morgan is primarily self-taught, although she did a take a single class in glass blowing. After taking that class, she was approached to help out at a local glass blowing studio. She started out by exchanging studio time for her work of cleaning, grinding and general maintenance, and her practice has certainly paid off. Shannon also was fortunate to have a wonderful mentor Andre Gayet and her really supportive mom, Gail.
Be sure to order early at Girl Glass, because the exquisite ornaments sell out from time to time. You may also want to view more glass ornaments on the Ornaments.com directory. Article and images used with permission from GirlGlass.
