light made solid

Small stained glass panels can make lovely gifts. If you look around online, you'll see a variety of types of small panels. One of our favorite techniques for putting together a small panel employs copper foiling and what's called a "float frame." As discussed in a previous article, copper foiling is a technique pioneered by Louis Comfort Tiffany. It's primarily used nowadays to fuse together pieces of stained glass for use in small windows. It affords us a fairly fast, flexible and narrow line for our design. This narrowness is also ideal for working for float frames.

Float frames differ from ordinary picture frames. Most commonly, you'll see a float frame used to hold a photo between two panes of clear glass. It provides a clean elegant look for displaying photos. Since float frames are designed to handle this double thickness of glass, they are the perfect holders for small stained glass panels. We, of course, remove the original clear glass, and open up the frame from the back. Measuring the interior edge of the frame, we custom build small panels to fit the various sizes of float frames available on the market. After that, it's as simple as re-installing the rear side of the frame, and you're done. You end up with an elegant bold edge, which is a wonderful accent to a small panel. These frames are also great because they can be mounted on a desk, shelf or window sill. For further customization, you could easily also screw in a pair of eyelets in order to hang it. Float frames an all-around great simple solution.

For some examples of float frames in action, check out our custom glass gallery.