First in Glass

DESIGN YOUR HOME IN STYLE

FIRST GLASS

BY DEAN ROWLAND

There is something magical and wonderful about using glass as a decorative and functional element in the home. It’s stylistic, elegant, and sleek, and serves a variety of purposes.

We simply enjoy its myriad uses in the home as every day or special mirrors, lamps, pendants, tabletops, shelves, ornamental objects, shelves, stained glass, staircase panels, skylights, glass shower doors, front and patio doors, floors, walls and windows of all kinds.

Flat glass is the most prevalent type of glass, and its common uses are for windows, doors, tabletops and mirrors. Sand is melted with other materials into a liquid to a desired thickness and cooled, a process called float glass.

Hilton Head Glass supplies many vendors with heavy thick shelving of flat glass to be cut down to size, said Thomas Zombik, coowner with his artist/designer wife Veronica. The business, founded locally in 2002, has a 1,200 square-foot showroom in Bluffton carries 40 samples of glass.

“Our whole idea is to bring the people into the showroom and let them see for themselves the different style of glass,” he said.

It also features 10 full-size shower enclosures, its biggest seller. “There’s a huge market for that,” he said.

He installs safety-tempered glass on his popular frameless shower doors and does a lot of reglazing.

An innovative technique he employs is applying ceramic ink to the shower glass for a striking visual image.

“It’s an interesting process,” he said. “Glass goes through a plotter, a big printer, and it’s done with ceramic ink and cured with ultraviolet lighting.”

It turns a bare shower panel into a piece of art.

Kitchen backsplashes and their well-worn tile bricks can also be handed the royal treatment with back painting glass. Roll iron glass extracts iron to make it ultra-clear, then a few coats of paint on the backside make the paint come alive in their true color.

Glue is applied on the back and positioned on the backsplash.

“We can apply any color back paint the client wants,” from living rooms and offices.

Hilton Head Glass fabricates its own custom glass on-site.

HISTORICAL USES

The stone age people used obsidian, black volcanic glass for weapons and decorative objects until man-made glass made it appearance about 3,000 BC in Eastern Mesopotamia and Egypt. Glass manufacturing followed and Syrian craftsman invented the blow pipe in the 1st century BC, which accelerated the manufacture and modernization of glass production.

Venice had become the glassmaking center of the Western world, and stained glass in majestic European cathedrals reached its zenith in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Lead glass made its debut in 1674, and Jamestown was the home of America’s first glass factory.

Over the next three centuries crown glass for windows appeared and a sheet glass prototype was invented in 1902 that led to the mass production of window glass. Float glass ushered in flat glass, which is the predominant product still used today.

Today’s glass not only reflects light, but it also expands the illusion of expanding space in a room.

Sure, we’ve been using break-resistant glass for windows and doors for a long, long time and for other uses as well.

Newer products on the glass market that lean toward modern and contemporary home design for their textures and colors are:

Flooring. Glass flooring certainly is dramatic and visually daunting for the uninitiated. It provides light to sift through the house and allows spaces to visually connect with one another. Safety and anti-slip properties are part of the engineering and review process.

Stairs. Glass railings and balustrades are earning their share of popularity of late, and glass stair treads are nudging their way into today’s market on spiral and traditional staircases. It’s an understatement to say that laminated structural glass floors make a striking impression. The floor below takes own its on luxurious life.

Cast Glass Countertops. With tops 1-2” thick and made of custom textured glass, natural lighting turned into a warm textured glow will bedazzle you and friends.

Shower walls. Glass blocks have been put out to the architectural pasture for a while now by new lines of thin see-through glass that allows for a modern small-space walk-in shower. Decorative metal facades are a bonus.

Glass Entry Doors. Different colors, textures and shapes transform the ordinary front door into a piece of art. Etch the glass and add decorative marbles inside a glazed unit to shift the light and keep your privacy.