Student in CERFAV Glass school.
My project is a glass terrarium or vivarium. The terrarium consists of a wooden base, housing glass plants made using a blowtorch or thermoforming, but also real plants such as Begonia Rajah or indoor asplenium, as well as glass insects.
The idea for this terrarium came to me after a few drawings of worlds that inspire me: flora and fauna! I immediately started drawing dragonflies, trees, water and then this idea of a bubble. It was thanks to this little bubble that my project started to blossom in my head, this little bubble that protects, this fragile little bubble that we also must protect, and the feeling of well-being under this bubble. The idea was born, a terrarium in its own bubble, its own ecosystem, its own development. If we look a little further for a more underlying meaning, we can think of the development of oneself in this small world and this small planet that is Earth. But that’s just an underlying idea.
Insects, dragonflies, spiders, sowbugs, and beetles all feature prominently in my inspiration for wildlife. So it made sense to create a room that could be used not just as a simple terrarium, but also as a vivarium to house the little creatures we love (or hate). I then did some more in-depth research into the insects I could adopt and fell in love with phidippus spiders, tiny little spiders also known as jumping spiders! But they weren’t the only ones that caught my eye, sowbugs are also a species that I immediately fell in love with and I had to introduce them in my little bubble. So I decided to make them out of glass, but first I modelled them in VR using the module available at Cerfav. I was then able to model my woodlice and my spider in 3D and then turn them into glass pastes.
These glass pastes come in natural colours but are also more fanciful and will later be reworked to create the finishing touches.
As for the more technical aspect of the plants in this terrarium, they are plants that are easy to maintain, plants that are often used in self-sufficient bio-terrariums and that can easily cohabit together. There will also be wood shavings and dead leaves to represent what you might find in a sowbug vivarium, since that’s what they use to grow in the wild. As for the glass flowers, I decided to add them so that I could put flowers that would never really be compatible with the environment created in a terrarium, so that any plant could be integrated and make a pretty floral arrangement.
As for the base, I was inspired by the art nouveau style. It’s a style I’m particularly fond of and I absolutely wanted to incorporate it, but I also didn’t want the base to be all simple and just made of wood, so I decided to link the two together. So I decided to carve in the wood and do some pyrography on the base.
