Winter Sawmill is a small studio working in blown glass. Until the proper site exists, these notes are all the studio puts online. There is no news in them, only the materials, the process and the light in the room.
The room
The room is narrow and tall, with the bench pushed under the only window. Shelves of samples run along one wall and a kettle is nearly always on. The door is usually shut, less for privacy than to keep the dust in.
Materials
Materials come from a handful of suppliers and the list of them rarely changes. Batches are labelled with what they are and the day they arrived, nothing more. The aim is to know a few materials well rather than many of them slightly.
Method
Work moves slowly from a rough sketch to a test piece to a final run. Mixes and timings go in one ledger, so the next run starts from facts. The notes are what make the next attempt shorter, and nothing is rushed.
From the bench
Drawing.A shape that is hurried at the sketch stage tends to stay hurried all the way through. A drawing is redone until the proportions read cleanly from across a room. Notes about the light in the room where a piece will end up travel with the drawing. Proportions are checked against a single card of ratios that has not changed in a long while.
Materials.Sheet brass is left to darken on its own rather than lacquered. Every batch of finish is labelled with the day it was mixed and the wood it was tried on. Pigments are ground by hand from a short list: raw umber, yellow ochre, bone black. Materials are kept simple and local where the supply allows it.
The room.The kettle, the sharpening stones and the glue pot share the corner nearest the door. One project is laid out at a time, and the bench is cleared before the next one begins. A desk by the window is for drawing; the bench is for everything that makes dust. Shelves of samples are photographed under the same daylight throughout the seasons.