Welcome to Glass Mad! We’re so glad you found us here in our little corner of the internet where we share what we’ve been making. The mad in glass mad is shorthand for mother and daughter as we are a two generation team working in glass. For now our studios are in different states and setting up this little business during 2020 has been another way for us to feel connected even when we can’t enjoy our usual visits.
At one of our favourite forest lookouts
Penel’s studio is on the beautiful Northern Beaches in Sydney and she works in both soda lime (known as soft glass) and borosilicate (known as hard glass). These are all about melting points, not degree of difficulty. Soft glass melts much more readily at a lower temperature and flows together very happily, whereas boro requires much more heat to melt and to make good joins, but it does have other advantages such as being much less temperamental and more forgiving than soft glass. Penel loves them both.
Que’s studio is in East Brisbane and she is in there as often as her day job allows which is never as much as she would like. From the moment Penel showed her how to light the torch she hasn’t looked back, her very first piece was a freestanding small sculpture complete with leaves and dewdrops (check out the first blog post for a photo of this special little piece). Que is particularly fond of spiders and dragons and is currently rather obsessed with making colourful boobs.
While we do make and offer a few finished pieces of jewellery and some sculptural one-offs, our real passion is to make pieces for other makers to use in their own creations for that special touch of quirky magic. Here you will find all sorts of components from pairs for earrings to cabochons for setting in silver or adding into felt creations or bead embroidery or mosaics or…. whatever you make, a little sparkling glass treasure will always enhance it.