This Photograph appears
in the following Albums:
| Image ID: | 322 |
| Title: | Marver and assorted equipment for making stained glass mosaic for Glencairn |
| Source: | Raymond and Mildred Pitcairn Archives, Bryn Athyn, PA |
| Photographer: | Ed Gyllenhaal |
| Date: | February 2006 |
| Medium: | Digital camera image |
| Description: | A “marver” is a special table for shaping molten glass. This rolling pin is apparently the same one pictured in an old photograph of Ariel Gunther rolling out molten glass for making mosaic in the Bryn Athyn glass factory: “…we cast this onto a piece of very smooth cast iron, and then I made this rolling pin out of a piece of three-inch pipe, and I roll it out into an uneven pancake, about 3/8 of an inch thick. This was then annealed, and then it had to be cut up into these small tesserae for the mosaic work” (Gunther, Ariel. Transcript of Bryn Athyn glassmaking lecture. Raymond and Mildred Pitcairn Archives, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania). To create the exact thickness needed for the glass tesserae, a metal bar (perhaps the two pictured here) of the proper height was placed on either side of the marver (probably not the one pictured here) and the molten glass was rolled between them. The asbestos-lined paddles were part of the process of making gold leaf mosaic: “I would cut it up into pieces, about five inches square, and of course they would be concave, so we’d put them on a paddle, and put it into the glory hole, and flatten it out on a sheet of asbestos” (Gunther, Ariel. Transcript of Bryn Athyn glassmaking lecture. Raymond and Mildred Pitcairn Archives, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania). These objects were found in February of 2006, in the old barn where they had been stored when the Bryn Athyn glass factory was torn down in 1952. |