How he do dat?

[Paul Thompson]

I saw a new David Garcia (http://www.davidgarciaglass.com/) piece at Smith-Klein in Boulder (http://www.smithklein.com/Collection/ArtGlass) last week and was wondering ... how the heck did he do that (http://www.njmgallery.com/pages/garcia_tallvases.html)? The lines were absolutely parallel. My guess would be a pre-fused ribbon wound around a bubble. In any case, it really caught my eye.

[David Patchen]

That's good old canework--rods of glass with color running through the center. Fuse them together and roll them up on a bubble and you've got perfectly parallel lines. Heat it up and twist it and you've got parallel twisted lines.

It's been around for hundreds (more?) of years and pretty common--see Lino Tagliapietra's work for some of the best stuff ever made from cane. Check out Ed Schmid's Advanced Glassblowing book for a little 'how to'.