A Cut Above Touches Of Glass Can Offer Touch Of Class In Home Decor

Glass, that ancient and familiar material, is being pushed to the cutting edge. Windows, table tops and dinnerware accessories are standards, to be sure. But recent innovations and technologies are shattering conventions.

Today, architects and designers are using glass as a building and design element. Textured glass walls can transform modern homes into crystal pavilions. Decorative glass furnishings can add beauty along with color and pattern.

Artisans are exploring new ways to manipulate glass in its molten state or using age-old methods in novel applications, according to Carol Soucek King, Ph.D., whose book “Designs in Glass” (PBC International) will be published in September.

“They’re creating fabulous textured and sculpted surfaces,” Soucek King said, citing sandblasting, etching, sculpting, beveling, silk-screening, faceting, enameling and fusing among the techniques that expand opportunities for design.

Where color and decoration can embellish an ordinary surface or utilitarian application, designers now are considering glass.

Vivid color graces a collection of door pulls and handles designed by Mathias for Daum. The milky appearance comes from a process known as pate de verre dating to the Egyptians of 1,500 to 2,000 B.C. A sculptural dimension is achieved from molds in which crushed crystal colored by various metal oxides is mixed to a paste consistency and fired at high temperatures (1,500 degrees) for 10 days. The crystal - glass with a 24 percent lead content - gives the pieces more brilliance and accentuates the relief.

Available in six colors, the handles cost $195 each and the pulls $165 each.

Furnishings designers also are exploring other avenues. Some are experimenting with glass as a connective as well as decorative element.

New York designer Zev Vaughn likes mixing glass with other materials and using it in unexpected ways in the home. For a showhouse in Livingston, N.Y., last year, he teamed glass with metal and wood and set his creations in a dramatic blood-red bedroom, with walls striped in a tone-on-tone pattern and ceilings in a shiny patent leather finish. Amber-tinted glass finials that look like flames punctuate the rods holding diamond-patterned curtains. Seethrough glass spheres glitter like stars in the spangled chandelier, which is bejeweled with necklace-like strands of glass.

The rounded shapes are echoed in the glass finials of the bed’s metal posts, which in themselves are a surprise, stretching up beyond the silk upholstered headboard. More glass spheres are introduced as decorative elements, bridging wood and metal crafted into table bases. And the entire floor lamp base looks like an ice sculpture.

The bed sells for $4,000; the floor lamp, $1,400; the twisted chandelier, $3,000; and the glass-leg table, $800.

As contemporary in spirit as the glass-embellished furnishings are, Vaughn takes inspiration from the past for his motifs.

“Everything is rooted to 19th-century Venetian pieces linked to my modern craziness,” Vaughn said. “I’m also working with ethnic inspirations. The bed design really is reminiscent of the Ottoman Empire, as is the drapery hardware.”

It’s the light play that fascinates the designer.

“Using the glass gives some of the pieces a semitransparent quality that’s reflective and refractive.”

British designer Danny Lane also enjoys dabbling with glass in his furniture, some of which is produced in limited edition. His pieces have a sculptural quality, not unusual, because he also creates freestanding sculptures and fountains in distinctive forms that may be built into walls. Because of our preconceived ideas, most of his furniture seems unorthodox.

Consider, for example, the design of his Etruscan chair. Squiggly metal legs hold an irregularly shaped glass seat, and the metal extends up the back, where it swells into C-shaped supports that attach to another unevenly formed piece of glass.

In a room with little space, the chair’s transparency makes it an asset. Whether function matches its form might depend on individual taste. A pillow might add comfort, but not necessarily aesthetics. The chair sells for $4,000 through designers at the Richard Himmel Showroom in Chicago.

Some glass manufacturers are making pieces of furniture entirely of the medium - even in its more expensive form, crystal.

The Gueridon Nature table designed for Daum in the pate de verre technique marries form and color. The organic base, in a milky sea green, ascends to the tabletop like a curvy tree trunk. Peeking up from the clear-glass top are a trio of bullfrogs cast in bronze.

Baccarat’s lyre table has a base elegantly shaped like the musical instrument. All in clear crystal, the piece shimmers and one can imagine it capturing the light in a modern or traditional room, as it takes on the dimension of sculpture.

On a larger scale, glass blocks have become an integral part of modern architectural design. Once reserved for commercial use, glass block was developed by Corning Inc. (formerly Corning Glassworks) in 1935. In the late ‘80s architects and designers saw in it a decorative tool for opening up spaces to light.

The most obvious use of glass block is in bathrooms where a wall keeps rooms light while maintaining privacy. But dramatic uses in curved or straight walls may be seen throughout the house.

A good example is a contemporary lakefront home designed by Michigan architect Robert I. Wine. An arresting interior features a view from the entry straight through the living area to a back window wall that overlooks the lake. Part of the impact owes to an 11-foot-high curving glass block wall that separates an intimate home office-study while directing guests into the great room. The glass block is washed with light from a cove that helps create the luminous separation.

Glass block manufacturers are adding color (even such subtle ones as peach and blue, which Acme Brick Co. offers) and an array of textured block.

The success of glass block as a building and decorative material also may have inspired the production of glass tile, which is being incorporated into walls, floors and countertops.

Glass block, tile or other decorative glass can be integrated into architectural focal points, such as stained glass was in stately Victorian homes. Beveled, stained or etched glass are among the options for transoms, skylights and sidelights that flank entry doors.

Even freestanding screens with glass panels or glass-paned cabinet fronts have expanded the potential for the material. So you don’t need to use glass on an entire wall for impact.

Fancy glass installations can significantly change the look of interior walls as well. A decorative stained and leaded glass panel, custom-designed by Chicago artist Larry Zgoda, subdues the barrier between two rooms. An amber glow and sparkle from clear jewel-like beveled triangles and circles add warmth. Set in a maple-hued frame to match the baseboard molding, the highly geometric composition stands out against blue walls, and the golden hue is echoed in the ceilings. The panel invites light in, dressing the wall like a painting.

It’s the jewel-like quality of glass that is magnetic, almost magical to Zgoda, other artisans and people who admire their works.

Glass appeals to the magpie in us. There is something seductive about its sparkle. Color further enriches glass, and when light shines through, it glows. Luminosity, translucency, vibrancy that just aren’t characteristic of ceramics, metal or other materials make glass hard to ignore.

For all of its fragility, glass has some powerful facets.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Sources for glass Acme Brick Co., IBP Glass Block, P.O. Box 425, Fort Worth, TX 76101; (800) 932-ACME. Blome, available through architects and designers. Call (800) 875-0042. Daum Boutique, 694 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10021; (212) 355-2060. Richard Himmel Antiques and Decorative Furniture, The Merchandise Mart, Suite 1800, Chicago, IL 60654; (312) 527-5700. Paul Housberg, Glass Project, 59 Tingley St., Providence, RI 02903; (401) 831-4880. Mindscape Gallery, 1506 Sherman Ave., Evanston, IL 60201; (708) 864-2660. Zev Vaughn, Public Domain, Suite 2, 148 W. 16th St., New York, NY 10011; (212) 727-3729. Thonet Industries, A division of Shelby Williams Industries, Inc., 1348 Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654; (312) 527-3593. Wood Classics Inc., Osprey Lane, Gardiner, NY 12525; (914) 255-7871. Send $2 for a catalog.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Elaine Markoutsas Universal Press Syndicate