Michael’s art is in fact low-cost - considering the effort, the time consumption, the expenses and the artistic quality.
If you don't care about the quality, there are lots of places to buy for example birds on sticks, plates with penguins or small glass houses. They are cheap and easy to make, and they don´t need either artistic or technical abilities to be produced.
The price of the raw glass
The glass Michael uses comes from Bullseye in the USA. The price is approximately 10 times higher than window glass.
The high price of the glass is a result of the clarity and the fact that it is perceived lively. Furthermore, is the importance that every color of glass has the same ability to expand the same amount, otherwise the glass will break during either the heating or the cooling off process.
Additionally, Michael uses many helping materials in the process, such as support glass, sandblasting flakes and a lot of ceramic felt to levelling and so on.
Electricity
Everyone of Michael’s burnings use between 20 and 65 kWh depending on the size. Glass art needs to be burned 2 times at least (the melting together and the shaping). Normally, Michael can only fit 3 topics in the oven at the same time.
The structures in the glass that Michael creates, needs an extra 2 to 5 burnings. And time-consuming burnings. The organic shapes also need an extra burning.
Tools
There is a need of many tools to create glass art. Most of Michael’s tools and machines use diamonds and the machines (e.g. grinding machine, flatter, circular saw) are water cooled and are therefore expensive.
Finally, Michael owns a big glass oven, lots of shapes, a sandblaster cupboard and a large compressor.
Waste
The Bullseye-glass often comes in sheets and there will be some leftover. The sheets are hand-rolled and thereby have rough edges that need to be cut off. When Michael for example cuts a round shape from the glass sheet, all the corners will be waste. The organic shapes produce most waste.
Glass with structures are difficult to create and take a lot of tries that can’t be used. Michael has done a lot more than 1.000 experiments and is therefore able today to create glass structures and shapes that no one else can.
Time
It can be a time-consuming process to create glass art - especially the work of grinding.
Every burning takes between 1 and 2 days depending on the size. Particularly, the cooling off takes a lot of time, to avoid liquid glass being trapped between the set glass, as it will make the glass break, when the liquid glass sets as well and contracts.
The long burning time is due to the fact that glass is a very bad conductor of heat.
Other
Finished glass art and materials aren’t flat as for example canvases and need much storage space.
Oven, sandblaster cupboard, machines, raw glass, shapes and so on also need much storage space.
Transport and shipping need expensive wrapping and packaging.
