Glass is a marvellous material. Everything about it makes it an incomparable plastic medium in the hands of an ingenious artist, offering his imagination and talent almost limitless scope for discovery. [René Lalique] Glass: tough, fragile and unpredictable; colourful or colourless; capable of flowing like metal or being carved like stone. To be shaped it must be heated and reheated to extreme temperatures and as it cools it may shatter explosively without stringent precautions. No two pieces will ever be identical, and what you think you placed in the kiln will rarely if ever come out exactly as you expected and planned.