Clare Gaylard Glass 

I have found a Moth benefactor to bring me the beautiful departed, working from the real thing is so much better and more tender.

I have been making ornate, glass finials for hairsticks.

Silver leaf can react with clear glass and produce a sudden amber/gold quality - this was not what I was looking for - but I like it.

Looking like moth wings.

Moths for midsummer: ‘... when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out...’ I was ready to step into summer after all the intense green-blue of my lockdown spring and needing to develop new work for this summer's SCS exhibition (online) but didn't expect this diversion. I excavated two, small, exceedingly sub-fusc, moth bodies at my studio while deep-sorting and on the same day came across a splendid ermine moth in the eaves of an adjacent barn, alive so not collectible and too high up to photograph effectively. Moths it is then. (W B Yeats: Song of Wandering Aengus) 

I’ve made glass earring clouds - take the weather with you. 

I had a vague notion of the Christian symbolism of the Passion flower and was given the rather magnificent details on Instagram. The five petals and five sepals of the plant were said to represent the 10 apostles (leaving out Judas, the betrayer of Jesus; and Peter, because he denied knowing Christ). 2) The purple corolla has approximately 72 filaments, which reportedly was the number of thorns in Jesus’ crown. The three prominent stigmas of the plant were said to represent the nails used on the cross

4) The five stamens were claimed to symbolize the number of wounds in Jesus’ hands. *Catholics and natives living in South and Central America still call the plant the “flower of the five wounds.” 5) The lance-like leaf lobes were explained as being symbolic of the spear that punctured Jesus’ side

6) The dark spots under the leaves are said to symbolize the 33 pieces of silver paid to Judas to betray Jesus.

7) The flowers die after a single day – the time Jesus spent on the cross. And because the petals reclose over the ovary, the conquistadors pointed out that this was similar to Jesus being placed in the tomb and seen as the “hidden wisdom” that constitutes the “mysteries of the cross.”

Making millefiori cane (or murrini) is very like the process of making rock or picture candy with an image or lettering running down the centre. You build outwards from the core, stretch the item to miniaturise it and cut into chips - millefiori from the Italian, and meaning ‘a thousand flowers’. I deliberately make mine uneven to yield different sizes.

I have only ever seen them in their adult state! Pliant and much less sharp...

To make a gift for botanical artist Sarah Casswell, I have one of her exquisate, smaller (but somehow monumental) paintings and it is one of my favourite things, so it was a challenge trying to catch that spirit in glass on such a small scale. I had a few floral misfires before I got here.

Of course, and there's rosemary for rememberance, seasonal cycles.

Never thought I'd use a title like that, a wonderful series of relics on my evening walk.

Birthday picnic at Iken last week and the most etherealand luminous light, moon up at midday.

Instagram browsing and delighted to discover across a piece of myself from years ago, in slides of degree work at Loughborough Uni (was Loughborough College of Art & Design) from a post by an interior designer and illustration lecturer (My Designer Friend) I zoomed in thinking I might just see work by old friends so this was like seeing a different sort of old friend.