Engraved Glass Courses
Amanda Lawrence teaches our glass engraving course. Her work is exquisite and very varied.
The first thing to know about glass engraving is that you have to have patience and a steady hand. If you have both then you are already ahead! The normal reaction from a student is ‘I love the work and would love to be able to do it, but oh dear I can’t draw’. Don’t worry, lots of people can’t, so they trace the patterns instead!
There are a number of different engraving techniques including drill, stipple, sandblast and cameo. Basic engraving is produced with a diamond or tungsten point. Designs can be made by making and linking lots of dots by carefully tapping the glass (stippling) or by scratching lines (linear). While both these processes are very time consuming, they are considered to be very good for new students.
The drill is the tool widely used by engravers, although the more experienced artist will use a micro-motor or flexible drill drive to achieve good results. The flexible drill is very good for those wanting to do cameo, intaglia or relief engraving enabling the artist to achieve greater depths of engraving.
