Lauscha Milky Way

It has taken me a long time to understand this glass - a long time to get the point of it.

This is Lauscha Milky Way - and in the unworked rod - it is a lovely, lovely misty blue - a translucent colour. And until the CiM moonstone colours came along - one of the few translucent glasses around.

But when you anneal it - it goes opaque. It looses it's translucency and turns to a very pale bluish white. Where's the pretty translucency? And so, disappointed, I put this glass aside.

But now that I am doing more sculptural stuff - now I get it! Because what you now have is a stiff colour - which is easier to keep control of, that is uber-easy to read the heat in while you are working it - that anneals to an opaque! The workability and stiffness of a transparent, but comes out as an opaque. Brilliant!

This off-mandrel, sculptural pony is pre-annealing. Note the more opaque band in the neck where I blew the heat control. He is, in fact, cracked there.


However, I went ahead and annealed him, and while he has stayed in one piece, I can feel the crack in his neck when I run my thumb over him. Working kind of large for my abilities just yet.

But, post annealing, now he is a milky white horse - slightly bluish - sort of a glacier color - but a solid colour. It is not without some areas of translucency, but just enough to be interesting. There are a couple of yellowed areas too - so I may have smoked the glass there.

I'm quite delighted to have this glass now!

This was pony number 2 - better heating, but the poor baby didn't get a mane! No cracks, but he's bald! Which tells me something about why the neck cracked in the other one. Blew it with the mane. If you don't get the parts done in the right order with this sculptural stuff - it just doesn't work.

Here he is, annealed. Still bald, poor baby. But not burned either - so that's an improvement too.