The story behind the glass.

Surprise!  I’m back!  I have so missed you guys.  Even though it seems like I have been lost to the MY Town Friday Shoot-out,  I’ve been here, lurking.  Watching all your posts and making an occasional comment; keeping track of the topics, but not finding the ambition to actually post.  This last week when glass showed as the next topic I felt a surge of interest, of energy, and the next few weeks are all topics I can see myself showing so I thought it a good time to come back and rejoin the (world) group. 

 

Lets talk GLASS - Over the life of ‘Flowers’ I have posted two times about the apartment in Rio.  Both times I mentioned the windows but didn’t really talk about the why and how.  Now I’d like to go there with you.  

Because we looked specifically for an apartment that needed to be refurbished, we found one that was in pretty sad shape.  The apartment had nice large windows in each room but being limited by a ‘normal people’ budget, the view from those windows is a blank, rather unpleasant looking wall of the neighboring building.  When making our plan for modernizing the apartment it was apparent that we would need to change out the old metal windows and one idea led to the next and we ended up visiting with a small company in Friburgo to find out how much it would cost to have special glass made for the new frames.  The idea was to make the windows with scenes from around Rio, creating our own view.   The dining area would have an Italian look, tiled steps with old pottery. The small living room would have four panels made of scenes from photos of of Rio, connected by oceans waves which surround the city.  The Master bedrooms has what started out to be a woman lying on the beach (a line drawing of mine) but ended up looking like an abstract of the country side – I am sure it is much more appropriate for a bedroom.  

    
Fernando took my photos and drawings, recreated them on heavy paper the size of the windows, cut out the negative space and after we approved the drawings attached the drawing to an extra thick glass and sandblasted the designs to our specs.
[CRISTAL arte decorativa em vidros, by Luiz Fernando Paiva: Alameda Barao de Nova Friburgo, # 129, Olaria: (22) 2522-9578]
I thought it would be interesting for you to see how this process happened.  Camillo and I stopped by the Artisan's shop and ask if I could take photos… I was a bit disappointed, there were no projects in the works so I could show drawings taped to the glass – that sort of thing, but they did allow me to take a photo or two….There were a lot of finished orders, I wasn’t able to get good shots for you – they were leaning against other windows and had lite and reflections, but here is small sample of his work if you are in need a decorative window or two.
 
 
   

My town FSO - Wrought Iron

This week I arrived in Houston for a month with my daughter and her family. Normally when in Houston I have done the week’s shoot-out here. But last week while in Friburgo, I took some photos just for this shoot out and had a planned story.
When I left Friburgo on Wednesday last week I packed my computer bag and at the last minute decided to leave my external drive = my photo archives = my new way of keeping photos I’ve taken for future topics in neat little folders. I thought it is just too much work to haul everything all around airports, to lift the computer bag full of wires, and stuff up into the overhead bins, ‘I’ll just leave it here.’ Completely forgoting about my new filing system ….
Without my photos from Friburgo I had to begin looking here for interesting wrought iron…. nothing, nothing, nothing. Today I remembered that I had forwarded several shots to my photo subject…. and that if I found that email I would have photos to use. I found those 6 plus have a few extras pulled from prior posts. So here is my story, however abbreviated....
In the Friburgo area, wrought iron is used as decoration and as security for doors and windows. It decorates the walls inside and outside of homes, it is used for tables and for chairs. I suppose this is not much different than other towns, what I find unusual here in Brazil, and especially in Nova Friburgo, is that you can go to any number of stores (lojas) that sell these items made right there on site, and if you don’t find what you want, the right size, the right shape – just what you want, you can speak directly to the ferreiro and ask to have something made.
We have a headboard (no photo) in the master bedroom where I took in an ad from a magazine from the States and two weeks later had just what I wanted installed in the room. We had a small corner in the apartment in Rio that needed a small table – which we drew a picture with measurements and after buying a special cut piece of glass – had a just right, small table filling the space. (in the back corner)

I thought that you might enjoy seeing this process…. now you have to realize that most of my photos are in Friburgo – I am sorry that I was not able to show you a complete process…. I will do this in April after returning home. I promise!
For now meet a modern day artisan and his beautiful daughter who runs the store. They very generously let me wonder around and take photos and I thank them ……