Cave Horses of the Ice Age

The Graal technique is often times a heartbreaker. It is a multistep, multi-fire process that usually finds a way to fail. The Graal blank is made, annealed, sandblasted, slowly/carefully bought back up to working temperature, more gathers, blowing, shaping and hope to get it off the pipe then punty and through the anneal cycle, again...whew! I hadn't done it for a long time but was asked to make a gift so might as well make two, right?

I'd wanted to get a bit more bite in the underneath red color which was achieved in this vase. However, the amount of red I used created a chance for air bubbles to form giving the big clear windows seen in the horse patterns. Interestingly, the sandblasting track is still visible in the clear glass (see the closeup pics). I kind of like how this looks even more ancient that a normal glass vase could. Perhaps they are a "window" on the past.

Measures 9" High x 7" Wide with a 3 1/2" deep opening.