Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Late afternoon, light on the door


Light against the old door frame. Somehow, time has stopped, as I get lost in the patterns.
Most of the windows in the rear part of this house (facing the sun) are “cylinder glass.” It’s not the oldest glass, but glass with an interesting interpretation of light. It’s not the best for seeing what your neighbor is doing in his yard, but it can’t be beat for daydreaming and staring at your walls.
How to make cylinder glass: A glass blower would first blow a very large bubble of glass that was confined within a steel cylinder. After cooling, the resulting cylinder would be cut around the middle along the long dimension. Each half of the cylinder, laid on its rounded side, would be re-heated on a flat surface until the cylinder was flattened by gravity. The uneven expansion of each side of the halves would result in the wavy patterns in the final flattened sheet.