Dichroic Glass

Some of the most beautiful jewelry on The Jewish Webshop was created in dichroic glass. Shoshana B. used it for her brilliant series, 'Stars!'. But what exactly is dichroic glass?

Fusing glass - heating it so that it melts together - is an age-old technique.  There’s evidence that even the ancient Egyptians used it. Nowadays fusing is used to create the hugely popular 'dichroic glass' - a type of glass originally developed by Nasa. It is beautiful and mysterious: every way you look at it, you see a different colour.

Dichroic literally means two-coloured: from  the Greek "di" - two -, and "chroma" - colour. Dichroic glass really does have two completely different colours: light passing through it transmits one colour, while light bouncing off it reflects the other - and the colours shift depending on the angle you look at it. You can't really capture the brilliant colours in a photo, but here's an example anyway.

NASA first developed dichroic glass for use in satellite mirrors. Multiple ultra-thin layers of different metals - gold, silver, titanium, chromium, aluminium, zirconium, magnesium, silicon - are applied to the surface of the glass in a vacuum chamber using high-tech techniques.

The resulting plate of dichroic glass can then be fused with other glass in multiple firings. When fused, its characteristics will change yet again resulting in new colours. Because of variations in the firing process, the result of one firing can never be exactly reproduced; each piece of fused dichroic glass is unique.