About Pâte de Verre
Pâte de verre is an ancient kiln-casting glassmaking technique. It is the original technique for producing glass, practiced for thousands of years beginning in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. With the invention of glass-blowing and the subsequent industrial revolution, glass vessels became cheap and abundant. The old method was forgotten.
The pâte de verre technique was revived and elevated to an art form in the last 19th and early 20th century France during the art nouveau movement.
Finely crushed grains of glass is packed into a plaster mould, that is created using an original model made of wax. The creation of the mould in such cases is called ‘cire perdue’ (lost wax), a method that is also used to create bronze sculptures.
The filled mould is placed in a kiln and heated to high temperatures to melt and soften glass (typically around 800 degrees celsius), and then slowly cooled. The mould is carefully broken away and the resulting object undergoes cold working, such as grinding or polishing.