Fossil Vitra™: The Masterclass

Capture the beauty of nature in glass using real plants.
No painting or drawing skills required.

Overview

In 2010 Glass Craftsman magazine published Paul’s original tutorial on Fossil Vitra, a technique for putting garden imagery on glass by applying glass powder to real plants and then firing in the kiln so the plants burned away, leaving the powder behind.

In the thirteen years since then, the technique has evolved significantly in Paul and Angela’s studio, especially in recent months as we’ve added Angela’s extensive and unique knowledge of combining fine silver and glass.

What’s Covered

We are so excited to share what we’ve learned in a new class unlike anything that has been offered elsewhere. There are no tutorials or YouTube videos for what you will learn in Fossil Vitra: The Masterclass, including:

How to prepare plants: The importance of choosing and preparing the plants cannot be overstated. With the right steps, everything from delicate leaves to heavier foliage are dramatically easier to work with and position. And, more importantly, proper plant preparation produces significantly improved plant imagery.

Choosing and Applying Color: You’ll learn how to layer and apply glass powders, working with both transparent and opalescent colors, to create more realistic imagery. You’ll also learn the secrets for placing and mixing colors to achieve results that look more like dimensional paintings and less like flat stenciled images.

Mica and Enamels: In this class you will use both mica and enamels, alone and combined with glass powder, to create gorgeous effects including ultra-fine details and sparkling highlights.

Fine Silver Imagery: With the right materials and methods you can use Fossil Vitra to reproduce your plants in fine silver on glass, creating a richness and elegance unlike anything you’re likely to see in the world of fused glass.

Finishing and Using in Projects: Sometimes a little bit of after-firing refinement can make a huge difference in the final results. You’ll learn you how to do that and how to use Fossil Vitra in other projects.

Live Online – The Best of All Worlds

Books and videos are great learning tools, but nothing matches live teaching where you can interact with your fellow students and instructors, ask questions, and get real-time feedback on your progress. Conducted live via Zoom, this class provides all those benefits without the expense of travel and with the luxury of working in your own studio.

Fossil Vitra: The Masterclass meets for five two-hour sessions, with at least one week between sessions to give you plenty of time to work on what you’ve learned. Each two-hour session includes approximately one hour of instruction/demonstration and an hour of supervised work time. Additionally, there will be open Zoom office hours for help outside of class.

You’ll receive a complete list of necessary tools and materials, most of which you likely already have in your own studio, at least 30 days before the first class. For the less common items, we will provide you with sourcing information. Not including sheet glass, powder, and fiber paper, material expenses for this class are estimated at less than $100.

Your Instructors

The husband and wife team of Paul Tarlow and Angela Byrd have almost 50 years of combined experience working with kilnformed glass. Paul is author of over 35 books on glass fusing and Angela’s stunning kintsugi glass was a Bullseye Emerge finalist and was awarded Best in Show - Glass at the renowned Tempe Festival of the Arts. Both Angela and Paul have been teaching students to fuse glass since the early 2000’s. Their “Mastering Fusing Fundamentals” consistently receives five stars reviews from over 95% of their students.