In Praise of Veiled Rubino Oro

I'm so excited! For the first time in years, I've added veiled rubino oro back into my glass repertoire. So what, you ask?! And what the heck does that mean anyway?

Rubino Oro is the Italian name for a lovely dark pink glass; it means 'gold pink' and it is actually made using gold as a colorant.

Veiled glass is kind of like a glass sandwich- in this case that lovely pink between two layers of clear. The clear surrounding the pink ensures that the pink won't react in either a good or bad way with the glass around it. It appears that it still strikes to a darker pink too- makes sense as that is related to the heat applied.


Rubino is one of those colors you want to stretch as much as possible because it's a bit on the expensive side due to the gold content, and the veiled rods help to do just that.

The beads at the top also include a bit of orchid pink enamel, so the bright pink is not all a result of the veiled rubino; it was mostly used as a background. The top half of the wee bottle is veiled rubino all the way- see what a nice color it is!

For more information on using rubino oro glass, you can look at this blog post of mine from years ago.

The Taming of EDP- A Lampworker's Secret

How many of you love edp (evil divitrifying purple)? Show of hands... How many of you hate it? Wait! Those are the same people. Well, I used to feel the same way... The color is beautiful, but it tends to just sit on the sidelines and watch me pass it by over and over again- the wall-flower of my studio.

The other day I was feeling adventurous and pulled a rod out  - oh, what the heck- why not. I made a portal bead base, rolled it in a bit of white enamel, and started adding some edp and other colors. And guess what? No devit- a practical miracle. OK, I'm thinking, maybe I just didn't notice it- maybe it will come out of the kiln looking ug-ly. But I'm just gonna try that again and see. So I did. And guess what- no devit again.

OK, I'm thinking, I must just be holding my mouth right today. We'll see what happens when I do this tomorrow.

And my un-scientific assessment of the situation is this. If you roll a bead in white enamel and apply the edp, you get rid of both the 'e' and the 'd' and end up with just the lovely purple you always wanted. There is a bit of edp in all of the beads pictured. I was having some other troubles with the tube, and managed to reduce some of the purple in that bead. The edp ended up a bit washed out looking in that bead as well, so there may be other odd things going on that I haven't quite figured out yet. I hope y'all will give this a try and let me know how it works for you.