Rollups

Feb 16, 2005 7 Replies
M

I heard about a technique called an "Australian Rollup." I found something at Bullseye about it--you make a fused sheet and roll it up on a collar. The examples they have appear to be left pretty much as a straight-walled cylinder. I wondered if anyone had done this with more extreme forms. Mostly, I wondered if anyone ever managed to gather over it to make a larger form.



I understand you would get some distortion of the pattern, but basically I'm wondering if it's possible to control such a large thin piece when covered with hot glass. I suppose one might try marvering it into a smaller shape first, then blowing it back out.



I assume that a smaller piece (their example is around



8 inches high) would be easier to deal with. The reason the idea came up was wondering if you could fuse cane in a criss-cross pattern before picking it up. Like all good ideas, others apparently had it long ago.

I checked Mike Firth's site and believe there is something there about rollups, but there's an indexing problem and it isn't clear just where it is. I always have fun poking around there anyway, so the time wasn't wasted.



Mike Beede


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N

You can gather over it but generally the furnace glass is not a match for the fused piece. I suppose you could gather Spruce Pine over System96.

We did a cane rollup last weekend on a collar, pinched the far end off and proceeded to blow the piece out. I watched Nick Mount blow out a large fused rollup at Corning last year.

I spent a couple of weeks with Michael Egan last summer. He's quite good with cane. He was the teaching assistant if you can believe it.

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M

The whole point of the Rollup technique is to allow fusers to blow using only a glory hole. It starts thin and can be manipulated in any way that a blown bubble of similar size and thinness can be worked.

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The compariable in blowing involves laying out murrini or stringer on a plate, heating it in the glory hole, blowing a bubble the right size and rolling the bubble onto the color and marvering it in. You can find images of this being done by a Murano glassblower Vetro, Grapevine, TX
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by Stephen Powell
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Marioni does the technique in his pieces with clear centered murrini
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W

Mike Beede

The rollup is like so many others originally an Italian technique, Muranese or Roman(?). In 1987 Richard Marquis and Dante Marioni gave a series of workshops in Australia, in particular at the Canberra School of Art where Klaus Moje was the founding Head of the Glass Workshop. This maybe when the technique was introduced to the Australians.

You can see a slide show of Marioni making one of his large mosaic vases using the rollup method on his website,

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if you look at the pulldown menu under "book."

Bill Weisberger

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M

While Marioni uses the rollup technique (sort of, since he does it on a plate while Australian Rollup uses a kiln fused sheet), I think you will find that the Italian technique rolls on to a bubble and starts with smaller murrini or cane that are modified in shape as it is further blown while Marioni uses large murrini slices. I will stand corrected with a good reference to an Italian technique site. (or book) Terrific set of pictures of the technique.

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M

Very nice. Thanks for the pointer. I have seen pieces like that before and wondered how they did it.

Mike Beede

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A

You can download a video (a vessel made with rollup technique) from our page:

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