Coldworking: Grinding and Polishing

An overview of the wide range of glass created by the Czech artists, including pâte de verre, sculptures, windows, world’s fairs displays (including River of Life), and their current studio in Zelezny Brod. Numerous figures in the glass world, including Dick Weiss, Dale Chihuly, Alice Rooney, Robert Carlson, Sylva Petrova, as well as Libenský’s students, discuss the Libenksýs’ work. Working in their studio, the artists make models, molds, and finish the sculptures by grinding and polishing.

As a visiting artist at the glass studio at California State University in Chico, Lipofsky is shown at work with the help of assistants. He discusses how he works, including his use of color, forms, and molds for shaping. He is then filmed alone at work in his own studio as he is seen finishing pieces started at CSU. He is seen cutting a piece with a tile saw and finishing it by grinding, sandblasting, and dipping in an acid bath.

Peiser is shown making his sculptures, beginning with Styrofoam shapes to be used for plaster casts, making batch, adding color, shaping the moon, pouring glass into the mold, grinding, polishing, sandblasting and acid polishing the small cast sculpture

This video shows some of the Dalzell-Viking production techniques: pressing, spinning, free-form flow. Included are designing, mold-making, batch, pot furnace and changing the pot, pouring glass into the mold, pressing by hand, shaping, gilding, grinding, polishing, and sandblasting.