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Boxes full of glass shards in every imaginable colour and shade, catching and reflecting the light… The workshop hasn’t even started and I am already in heaven. In the next few hours we’ll let our fantasy loose and combine those gorgeous, individual pieces of glass into something new and beautiful.

First, we choose a form: will our mosaics have a rectangular, round or an entirely different shape? A layer of transparent, colourless glass forms the base that will hold it all together. Coloured shards laid out carefully project our fantasy image into the physical world. Then a big decision needs to be made: do we choose tack fuse or full fuse? In other words, do we want our pieces of glass just melted together so that the individual pieces remain clearly recognisable or do we want to let them fuse fully to create a flat surface?

An unnerving walk follows across a few streets until we reach our teacher’s workshop. Our steps have never been so feather-light before, balancing our trays with the carefully arranged loose pieces of glass on them.

The end of the workshop leaves us in great excitement: how will our pieces turn out? They still have to be put in the oven and fused, which is a lengthy process. We’ll receive the finished works in a few days’ time.

Unpacking our creations is just as exciting as it was making them. There is a lot of clicking of cameras and frequent “wow, that turned out beautiful” exclamations. You can admire the results in this Daily Image. We included examples of mosaics before they were put in the oven (bottom row 1st and 5th), made using full fuse (top row 2nd, middle row 1st, bottom row 4th) and tack fuse (all the others).

With thanks to the ASTRON-JIVE-NOVA Personeelsvereniging (PV) and Atelier de Glazen Parel.