Devyn Ormsby’s glass fruit (aptly named “Devon Made”) has got us gagging. A homage to the blown glass fruit makers and collectors from the 1960’s, her collection features lemons, pears, mandarins, and bananas all made from glass in a single block of color.
“After spending a long time in the supermarket thinking about what fruit would work well, looking at so many bananas, pears, lemons and mandarins, I cast the fruit in silicone rubber and made plaster molds around that,” shared Ormsby with homestyle. According to Ormsby, this process involves many different stages to achieve the finished outcome.
First, you begin with fettling the wax. This is followed by building a contour mold (made of a plaster/silica mix) around the wax model. Once set, the wax is steamed out, leaving a positive copy. The contour mold is then dried and loaded into a kiln to be fired. Over time, solid glass gradually melts into the positive space filling a positive form. The contour mold now “baked” can be broken off revealing a glass object. This then is cold worked, sanded and polished, after which you are finally left with your glass fruit.
“Fruit holds a large significance in art history, which is where I think the appeal comes from,” observes Ormsby. “I’d thought for a while about what I wanted to make and kept seeing vintage glass fruit in op shops. Brightly colored with exaggerated forms, it was charming in its own outdated kind of way; I wondered where it came from, what its purpose was and who used to own it. Eventually, I set about making a cast-glass version true to the form of actual fruit.”
Take a look at some of her incredible work in the gallery below.
