Corning Museum of Glass

The collective term for the many techniques (such as copper-wheel engraving and cutting) used to alter or decorate glass when it is cold.

The process of cutting into the surface of an annealed glass object either by holding it against a rotating copper wheel fed with an abrasive or by scratching it, usually with a diamond.

(1) Several types of glass with newly developed surface textures, shaded colors, or casing, made in the United States from about 1870 and in Europe between about 1880 and 1900; (2) more generally, especially when written “art glass,” any ornamental glassware made since the mid-19th century.

Any crystalline inclusion present in glass. Stones consist of unmelted particles of batch, fragments of refractory material from the pot, or devitrification crystals. Stones of the first two varieties are generally irregular but rounded; those of the third variety are angular and well formed.

Smoothing the surface of an object when it is cold by holding it against a rotating wheel fed with a fine abrasive such as pumice or cerium oxide. Glass can also be polished with hand-held tools.

The generic name for decorative windows made of pieces of colored glass fitted into cames and set in iron frames. Strictly speaking, the term is inaccurate because, in addition to glass colored by staining, glaziers used, and continue to use, glass colored throughout by metallic oxide, glass colored by flashing, and glass decorated with enamel.

These terms are used inconsistently, especially in the context of contemporary glass. When used as a noun, murrina usually refers to a multicolored element embedded in an object, whereas murrine most often refers to slices of a complex cane.

Any instrument used by glassworkers to develop and shape an object. Glassworkers’ tools include the blowpipe, pontil, gathering iron, jacks, shears, clapper, pallet, block, pincers, battledore, lipper, and crimper.

The term applied to a number of decorative techniques, all of which involve painting, on the back side of the glass, a design that is viewed from the front (that is, through the glass). Because of this, the painter must apply the pigments in the reverse of the normal order, beginning with the highlights and ending with the background.

(from French gris, “gray”) (1) A method of decorative painting in monochrome gray especially, but not exclusively, on stained glass windows; (2) brown paint made from iron oxide, which, when fused to the glass, defines details in a stained glass window.

The technique of forming objects from rods and tubes of glass that, when heated in a flame, become soft and can be manipulated into the desired shape. Formerly, the source of the flame was an oil or paraffin lamp used in conjunction with foot-powered bellows; today, gas-fueled torches are used.

The generic name for a wide variety of techniques used to form glass in a mold.

An oven used to process a substance by burning, drying, or heating. In contemporary glassworking, kilns are used to fuse enamel and for kiln-forming processes such as slumping.