Flameworked Glass Orchids

Margaret Neher is fascinated by the variety of colors and shapes found in nature. As a child, she had an affinity for flames of a campfire, butterflies she collected, and shells she’d find at low tide. Her glass work reflects that lifelong fascination with the art found in nature. Margaret is best known for her orchid renditions featured on scent bottles, sculptures, and goblets. Orchid growers commend them for their realism and fine attention to detail.

Margaret works over a propane-oxygen torch. Starting with clear glass tubing and colored rods, she melts the glass over a 3000-degree flame and handworks them into detailed sculptural forms using hand tools. Each component of a piece must be made individually and then assembled all at once in the end. To make a flower, she rotates the end of a rod in the flame until it melts and balls up. Then she flattens it with a mashing tool, bending and forming it in the flame using tweezers. Each flower petal is laid out in a row on her bench, attached to temporary glass handles. Once she assembles each component of the flower, she puts it in the kiln for annealing (a firing cycle that takes all of the internal stress out of the glass to prevent cracking once it is cool). She then creates the vessel for the orchid.

Margaret creates an exquisite goblet for the orchid to vine around. The bowl and stem will be shaped from tubing with colored glass melted onto it in a solid layer, as separate components. They will be annealed and then attached in the torch and annealed again. The vines and flowers will then be attached to the goblet using a very small hand torch. It is then annealed one last time.

Margaret's own particular vision and aesthetic make her work unique. She is drawn to the realism of her work, to the challenge of working to capture an ever-changing living thing in an unchanging form. Margaret has captured the soul of these richly colored, rare and fleeting blooms.