Chemistry – Ornamento

Jewels from the Sidewalk

I walk to and from work every day and I constantly scan the sidewalk for treasures I can use to make something. Trash day is the best day of the week!!!

Awhile ago, I wrote about making lampworked beads from glass I found on the sidewalk. Now I have added brown beer bottles to my cobalt blue wine and aqua Bombay Gin bottles. And a co worker contributed too! She had a beautiful yellow glass vessel sink in her powder room and when it cracked and she had to have it replaced, she gave me the broken glass.

The pictures below show each kind of glass, plain, fumed and fumed with stringers on top.

Since I don’t know the COE of the glass, I don’t mix the colors. I cut the glass as best I can and hold it in the flame with a long hemostat. It’s loads of fun and you never know what you’re going to get.

Real Steampunk

The Steampunk genre (or more correctly, sub-genre) encompasses movies, clothing, art, fiction, jewelry, sculpture and more. It draws heavily from old fashioned technology and appeals to those of us interested in technology, fantasy, and exploring mixing materials from different times and places.

I never really thought about why Steampunk is called Steampunk (as opposed to Technopunk for example) until I visited the Treadgar Iron Works in Richmond Virginia. Tredgar churned out ammunition for the Confederacy during the Civil War, but also manufactured steam locomotives and other new inventions of the Industrial Revolution. The perfection of the steam engine changed everything and took large parts of the Western World from an Agrarian to an Industrial Economy. Hey-sometimes it takes me a long time to see the obvious, and then I see it everywhere.

Here are some pictures I took of the old machinery at Tredgar.

The first museum exhibition of Steampunk design will take place at the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University later this year. This is appropriate in so many ways. Be sure to check out the blog devoted to the exhibit.

Fireworks and Science-Inseparable

By: ornamento.blog July 8, 2009July 9, 2009

Art, art, creativity, crafts, inspiration, Chemistry, Fireworks, Pennsylvania, Photography, PhysicsArt, creativity, Fireworks, inspiration1 Comment

What does art have to do with science? Just about everything. The art of fireworks is no exception. Fireworks get their color from chemistry. Physics plays an important role too.

Fortunately, you don’t need to be a scientist to appreciate fireworks. I took the pictures below at my friend Terri’s annual Fourth of July celebration that ends with a trek to her town park to see a beautiful fireworks show.