POWERHOUSE COLLECTION

'Kite' by Bertil Vallien

Object No. 96/202/1

Made by Beril Vallien with the assistance of a group of glass workers in his studio, in 1989. Vallien first makes a wooden model of the boat and burries it into a rectangular container filled with sand. The impression of the wooden boat becomes his mould. Then he places small glass sculptures and other elements at the bottom of the mould according to his design. They are fixed in place with the first layers of molten glass which are poured into the mould (the gathers are in the half-molten state and do not spread throughout the boat). After the glass have settled and cooled down, usually the next day, a few new glass layers follow into which Vallien's assistants deposit small blown glass elements straight from the rods. As new layers and elements are being added in the continuing process, the glass slowly spreads out to fill the boat in. When the boat is finally full, the last layer is allowed to cool down and is then ground to a perfectly even and smooth surface by a rotating 'machine' developed especially for this purpose by Vallien. The whole process takes a few days.