Artist Melts Glass Rods Together to Create a Loaf of Awesomeness Loren Stump

Californian artist Loren Stump is a master of the ancient Italian glass art of murrine. The ageold technique involves fusing canes of glass together and slicing through them to reveal intricately patterned sections. Its a lot like slicing through a Swiss cake roll or a loaf of bread to reveal a beautiful crosssection filled with mindboggling classical imagery such as Da Vincis Virgin on the Rocks. To create a murrine, Stump works backwards he starts with a twodimensional image. He then layers different colors of molten glass around a core, heating and stretching it into a rod. When cooled, the rod can be sliced into the desired thickness, with each slice possessing the same pattern in the crosssection. Murrine was first practiced over 4, 000 years ago in the Mideast, and later revived by Venetian glassmakers in the early 16th century.