![\"\"](\"https:\/\/artsnb.ca\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Venice-street-2019-199-683x1024.jpg\")
Antonella\nGallenda led me and three other women in the techniques associated with using\nsmalti glass and the traditional hammer and hardie tools. These tools and\nmaterials have been in use for hundreds of years going back beyond the\nByzantine times. We had free reign in choosing our colours from the Orsoni palette\nincluding the gold leaf smalti they are known for. I had never used hammer and\nhardie \u2013 an embedded chisel point that you hold the smalti onto while striking\nit with the sharp edge of the half-moon shaped hammer. Sounds easy enough but\nwhile I struck and crushed many a piece, Antonella could succinctly cut one\nsmall rectangle of glass into many even, tiny slivers. Smalti mosaics are not\ngrouted. The surface of a smalti mosaic is generally uneven due to the uneven\nnature of the hand poured glass slabs that the smalti is cut from. Therefore,\nthe cut fragments, known as Tesserae, must be placed directly up against each\nother with as little space between them as possible. Cutting and placing\nbecomes very important if you wish the design to be effective and the mosaic to\nbe cohesive. Antonella worked alongside us, instructing as needed, for 5 days,\n9-5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Left:<\/strong> Antonella at Orsoni, Venice 2019<\/em> The design I\nhad worked on at home ended up not being the one I used. A week before leaving\nI had photographed some horse chestnuts (conkers) that I had picked up near my\nhome. I brought one of these photos with me and it was this that felt right to\nwork with. The spiky exterior shell of the seed seemed to call for the nubbly\ntextured gold smalti that Orsoni makes. Antonella encouraged us all to add gold\nto our pieces. We all joked that if we did not have enough gold in our pieces\nthat Antonella might refuse us our course certificates. The finished piece is\n16\u201d x 12\u201d, much of that taken up by the chestnut image. The 5 days of the\nworkshop brought me to the completion of the chestnut itself. Antonella helped\nme gather glass to bring home so I might do the background back in NB.\nInternational travel with a still drying mosaic is a challenge in itself. No\nsmalti was harmed in the making of this journey. The chestnut came home intact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking back at the time at Orsoni, from a vantage point of several months later, what I value most about the experience is the immersion in the atmosphere and daily running of the Furnace. In the next room there were women cutting rods of smalti into small rectangles with chisel like hand tools, keeping up a constant banter in Italian and occasionally singing to the radio, calling out to the man in the next small building whose job it was to take the cooled slabs of glass and hand slice them into rods for the women to take. Across the walkway from our room, were large open containers piled high with brilliant coloured fragments, leftovers from the process. Inside the flaming furnace area three men took turns stirring the molten glass batter with long spoons, scooping out spoonfuls and pouring them onto a metal slab that would roll the liquid glass like pastry dough. One of the men played \u201cair guitar\u201d on his 6ft. long spoon as I filmed him working. We wandered through the 10-12ft (?) high shelves of the library of colour, surrounded by thousands of slabs of brilliantly hued glass. All of this will stay with me. Thank you, artsnb<\/strong> for the Career Development Grant<\/a>, and for helping me to have this experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can learn more about Sheryl and her work through her social media accounts<\/a> or her website<\/a>. Check out these YouTube videos<\/a> from the workshop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/artsnb.ca\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Sheryl-Crowley-At-Orsoni-Studio-in-Venice-Italy-Oct.2019-e1582644834938-1024x1024.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/artsnb.ca\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Antonella-at-Orsoni-Venice-2019-phone-90-1-1024x1024.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/li>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/artsnb.ca\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Orsoni-disused-melting-drums-Venice-2019-174-1-1024x683.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Right: <\/strong>Orsoni disused melting drums, Venice 2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/artsnb.ca\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/CONKER-Orsoni-wkshp-2019-16x12inches-SherylCrowley-1500pixels-771x1024.jpg\"){kind=tracking}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/artsnb.ca\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Sheryl-Crowley-Short-Bio.-Links-Feb.2020-copie-1024x632.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n