Samuel Roy is fired up about glass.
As an artisanal lampworker, sometimes called a glassworker, he manipulates glass on a small scale using a torch in his Ormstown-based workshop to create unique beads and exquisite pieces of jewelry.
Roy’s workshop is small but fully equipped with an annealing kiln, which slowly cools molten glass to prevent stress or cracking, as well as two bench burners, fuel, and lots of implements for shaping and creating textures in the glass. “My main tools are heat, gravity, and timing,” he says, noting all his work is done by eye. “You have to go by feel, by the way the glass moves,” he explains.
Roy has always been an artist. He says plasticine and drawing were the only things that kept him calm as a child. “Instead of medicating me, my parents encouraged my passion,” he shares with a laugh, before noting he studied fine arts before discovering a love for glasswork. He enrolled in the Espace Verre college program offered in association with the Institut des métiers d’art at the Cégep du Vieux Montréal.
After graduating 13 years ago from the program, which he describes as “intense,” Roy worked as a glassblower for around four years, and as a glass artist working on larger projects. Eventually, he decided to focus on lampwork and the creation of fine jewelry.
“I was looking for something that would allow me to support my family to a certain extent,” says Roy. “It was something that would allow me to express myself one hundred per cent. In terms of form, colour, and composition, I don’t really have any limits,” he explains. The fact that a strong market for artisanal jewelry already existed meant that he could begin to make a name for himself right away, without having to redefine the market or develop a niche.
A traditional method
Roy says he is particularly happy to be carrying on one of the oldest trades. The earliest glass beads date back over 3,000 years and can be traced to Egyptian and Roman times when they were used in trade. Despite this long history, Roy says that glass began to be used as an artistic medium around 50 or 60 years ago. “We are still exploring its characteristics,” he notes.
Lampwork beads were traditionally created using an oil lamp where the artist would use a pipe or foot-powered bellows to blow air into the flame to soften the glass. Modern artists, including Roy, use torches fueled by a surface mix of propane and oxygen to melt the glass.
Roy creates his beads by spinning molten glass threads from a heated glass rod around a metal mandrel coated in “bead release” to gradually build up layers of glass. Once the base bead or shape has been formed, other colours of glass are added to the surface to create different designs. Dots or lines can also be added by melting glass stringers on the bead to create textures. Roy is also able to work with softened glass to create shapes, such as the trio of miniature chili peppers he often wears around his neck.
The glass heats up quickly, but it cools just as fast – leaving little room for error, Roy admits. “My work windows are usually around 15 to 20 seconds,” he says, noting that “The way you have to move is like a choreography you do with the glass.”
The results, he says, are often magical.
Examples of Roy’s work can be found at The Verretuose’s boutique online at leverretuose.com. Roy will also be participating in Christmas markets throughout the region over the next several weeks, including those in Ormstown and Salaberry-de-Valleyfield.