A few weeks ago I got a comment on my Guide to Lampworking Glass from a very nice woman named Mona saying that she is with Gaffer glass – not listed in my list – and would love to send me some samples. How could I refuse? Free glass is like… well it’s the most excitement that I’ve had in a while.

Gaffer lampworking cane is 96 C.O.E., and produced in New Zealand. The US warehouse is in Washington – which is where my glass came from. I’m not too observant I guess, because I didn’t notice the glass melting any slower or working very different than the 104 C.O.E. that I usually work with. The glass did freak me out a bit because all the colors I got were striking colors. The dark green color (looks black in the picture) actually turned a transparent cobalt in a couple of spots for a few seconds. I wasn’t able to get the lightest color to strike, but that is probably user error.

In short, I will probably explore the 96 C.O.E. line in greater depth at some point. The colors available in this range are very appealing to me – they seem to be very rich in color. Jewel tones is how Val Cox describes them in her book. I’m still learning the language of color, but the Gaffer colors are just a different look than the Italian 104 C.O.E.

I want to get a little bit more familiar with glass in general before I go in the 96 C.O.E. direction though – although I might buy a few colors to go with the Val Cox frit I have already. I don’t know. If I could, I’d get all the glass… But quite frankly storage is a major issue. Hopefully I’ll have a solution to that by this time next week. We’ll see.