Bob Cairone Stained Glass

Amaryllis Panel

This panel is for a door in a hutch. The hutch was a piece of furniture originally purchased by my first wife. In the divorce, the hutch was assigned to her, but she had no place to put it, so I stored it for her free for a year. When that time was nearly up, my ex wanted to sell it to me. I had no interest in the hutch - instead I wanted to buy back my Broken Leaf painting, which I had given to her when we were dating. We compromised on a package deal where I bought both (and for less money than I'd have been willing to pay for the painting alone). However, I never felt comfortable with the hutch. With these panels, the hutch is transformed, and now it feels more like my own. Plus, this panel celebrates Karen's interest in plants, and for the Amaryllis in particular.

Anthurium Panel

This is the third panel for the hutch described above. I was happy with how this panel turned out. The design worked out nicely, both in itself and as part of the tryptch. With a piece count of about a hundred, it's midway between the poppy panel, which had about 150 pieces, and the Amaryllis, which had about fifty. The soldering also went very well. The hutch looks gorgeous, and it gives the whole kitchen an entirely different feel.

Poppy Panel

This is the second panel for the hutch described above. This was a much more complicated panel, with over three times the piece count of the Amaryllis panel. With this work, I feel my ability to work in glass is starting to come together. Installed in the hutch, the table and room form a continuous architecture. The final panel for this hutch, planned to be an Anthurium, will also be designed as part of a continuous whole. In planning this panel, Karen and I considered several options. One plan was to do three Amaryllis of different colors, with the alternative doing three different types of red flowers. I think we made the right choice.

Hutch Tryptch

Here's a picture of the three panels combined in the hutch.

Monstera Glass

This piece was requested by my wife, Karen, who has a passion for plants, and keeps our house looking like a tropical jungle. I found the Monstera leaves particularly interesting and dramatic. When I wanted to get back into stained glass work after a long hiatus, this was the design I choose. It's a fairly simple design, with only 26 pieces not including the border. But, the internal holes in the leaves were very challenging to cut. Since these holes are so characteristic of the plant, it was a critical design decision not to compromise their integrity with distracting relief cuts. A lot of effort went into the selecting the best graining of the glass for the leaves, but I broke several pieces cutting the deep curves. It took time and patience to complete. I hope you agree with me that the extra effort was worth it.

Frosty

This is actually a portrait of my cousin's pet Cockatiel, Frosty. The work was done in fused class, a very different technique from the copper foil method I normally use. It offers different affects and has different limitations than leaded glass. Most importantly, the design can be free of the thick lines that are needed for the leaded beads. To fuse glass, the pieces of glass are cut as usual, and are then laid down on another peice of glass and placed in a kiln. The firing causes the glass to melt, and properly controlled the glass all fuses together instead of becomming a puddle. The right kinds of glass must be used to match the coefficient of expansion, or thermal stresses would cause the glass to shatter. Because the work had to fit inside the kiln, and because this was my first experiement with the method, I kept the size small.

Private collection.

Leaping Orca

This piece was my first using lead free solder. Lead free solder takes a little getting used to, but the adjustments are easy, and the material is vastly superior to its toxic cousin in every way except cost. Lead free solder is brighter, stronger, takes finish well, and does not contribute to killing the planet as I try to make it more beautiful. I think this is a very important thing, and wish all stained glass artists would abandon leaded solders. This panel is based on a painting I did. It's a small piece, about 8" square, which allowed me the unbroken cuts for the sky and glaciers. The splashing water is a pearlescent glass, and gives a good effect in person that's not captured in this photo.

A simple geometric panel

Not a painting, and not exactly art as I normally think of it. But, it was a fun project to make and I'm in the process of setting up a workspace to make more figurative stained glass windows of original design, which will be more artistic. Still, this one looks really nice on the front porch of my home. Stained glass does have significant potential for artistic expression, and it's a very old and established medium. Modern methods and products make it much more accessible and safer for an individual artisan to produce quality work. This is one area my wife and I are looking forward to collaborating in.