I was so fortunate to attend a morning at Steve Robinson, Glass Art in St Davids a few weeks ago. It was a trade day courtesy of Pembrokeshire Tourism and gave us an idea of what visitors to Steve’s studio might expect if they were to book onto one of his workshops.

Steve is the very talented chap that has created the Pembrokeshire Tourism Awards that I have been lucky enough to win over the last 2 years for ‘Pembrokeshire’s Finest Breakfast’. I have always wanted a piece of his work, and now I have 2 very special pieces!

 

Steve’s studio is stunning and will leave you wanting to buy oodles to take home. I really liked the Puffin piece, I thought it was quite fitting for the B&B as we have the puffins so close by and also have so many guests staying that take the trip onto the island to visit them. Try as I might though, I could not find a ‘place’ in the B&B that it might fit in with. Maybe when I next redecorate we’ll have a different colour scheme and it can take pride of place then!

You may have seen some of Steve’s work for sale in John Lewis, for example-they stock his lovely range of splash backs for kitchens. His studio was full of wall pieces, bowls and tea light covers-it was the tea light covers that we were going to be having a go at making.

 

The glass is coloured with powdered enamels(I may not be technically correct here, this is what I remember!). I decided to do an underwater type scene -my vision was a seahorse floating in lovely blue water above a sandy sea bed.  Steve helped with the colours, as they don’t mirror the colour when it’s in its’ powdered state once it has gone through the kiln, so occassionally I was picking up the wrong sand type colours and blues!

 

Between us all there were many different designs and colours, the majority of us did seem to favour the blues and greens though-probably because a lot of Steve’s wares were highlighting those colours as we walked in, I guess.

 

So, once you have scattered your various powders and settled on your vision, you then scatter some grey powder which causes the glass to create bubbles-perfect for an underwater scene. Then a second piece of glass is popped on the top of the piece you have been working on- carefully so not to disturb your creative scatterings and thetwo pieces of glass, as one, are then placed in the kiln.

 

The glass is fired in the kiln at some ridiculous temperature(I can’t remember what!) and a day after, hey presto!

 

We had to wait a day for it all to cool properly before we could collect it. I waited with baited breath…did my seahorse shape stay enough for someone else to ‘see’ it was a sea horse???

 

Well, you tell me…..

I absolutely thoroughly enjoyed my morning and I am so pleased and proud of what I have achieved. My panel has pride of place in the large blue bathroom, as it suits the colour scheme in there.

 

If you would like to try your hand at Glass Art, you can book day and half day workshops with Steve here http://www.steverobinsonglass.com/

If you would like to take home a fantastic memory of Pembrokeshire, I would highly recommend it!

Foe information about Pembrokeshire Tourism, click here