Bricklayer's Nightmare

Bricklayer's Nightmare - Glass fused onto Brick

Steve J. Noll

This was my first landscaping project. It is a 97-foot long garden wall made from brick with colored glass flora and fauna images kiln fused onto the brick surface.

The wall is three bricks high and somewhat serpentine as needed to follow the existing terrain. It is built on a small footing made with high-strength concrete containing two lengths of #3 rebar. The glass used includes Moretti glass rod, Spectrum glass sheet, a bit of Thompson glass enamels, and some CoffeeMate jar glass. The brick is inexpensive (25-cent) common red brick chemically treated (proprietary) to improve the adhesion of the fused glass, but I wouldn't recommend a project like this for an area that freezes. The location is the base of a bank in coastal southern California.

The brick was fired in a Aim 1709D kiln with a Fuji ramp/soak controller, up to 8 bricks at a time. All bricks, even ones without glass had to be fired in the kiln as the treatment does darken the brick slightly.

Have patience. It can take several minutes for the images to load on dialup.

Pond scene.

This pond scene needs some work. I use styrofoam for "mortar" during design.

Sunflower scene.

This Sunflower scene section is waiting to be installed. The mortar will cause the pattern to become aligned.

Mr. Bunny

Okay, I didn't say I was an artist.

Some are on top.
Some glass is on the top of the brick.

Dragonfly on top of brick.

Geckos on top of brick at very end of wall.

Glass fused to common ceramic tile.

Next are four images that span the entire length of the project. They are stitched together from dozens of photos, so some distortions are visible. Each section is 25' long. Scroll horizontally to see the entire length. This large group of images may choke Microsoft browsers so they are placed on a separate page web page so as not to hang up the whole works.

~~~~~~~Click Here to see entire wall~~~~~~~

Captain Kirk! I'm an engineer, not a bricklayer!