Erica Cane

What the heck is Erica Cane? Well, it's my attempt to use my (very large) stash of frit to make handmade Gaffer Cane. I don't have a glass furnace, so what I did was melt a gather of glass, dip it in frit, melt it in, and then wind it into a bead. I'd played with this technique before, but I was checking out Val Cox's website. She was doing something similar, but she had the idea of layering transparent frits over opaque ones. The end result is pretty close to Gaffer cane, but with not quite as many layers.

Gaffer Glass

I've been having a lot of fun the last few days, playing with my small stash of Gaffer cane. My understanding of how this cane is made is that a gather of glass is melted in a furnace, and then rolled in intense colour, and then coated in clear glass. The gather is then pulled into rods that lampworkers can use. (You can also do multiple layers of colours, or have layers of opaque and transparent glass.) When you make these into beads, the result are fabulous: threads and layers of colour combine into a lovely swirly bead that never fails to fascinate my eye.

I will slowly be listing these on Etsy, a few a day as time allows.