Exclusive handcrafted jewellery featuring lampworked glass bead necklaces with semi precious gemstones and spectacularly colourful dichroic glass neckpieces

What is Dichroic Glass?

What is Dichroic Glass?
Dichroic Glass is a multi layer coating placed on glass by using a highly technical vacuum deposition process. Quartz Crystal and Metal Oxides are Vaporized with an electron beam gun in an airless vacuum chamber and the vapor then floats upward and attaches then condenses on the surface of the glass in the form of a crystal structure. The manufacturer's colors have as many as 30 layers of these materials yet the thickness of the total coating is approximately 35 millionths of an inch. The coating that is created is very similar to a gemstone and by careful control in thickness, different colors are obtained. Thus, all the coatings are created using the same exact materials. Originally created for the Aerospace industry, Dichroic Glass is now made available to the artist community through Coatings By Sandberg, Inc. The main characteristic of Dichroic Glass is that it has a transmitted color and a completely different reflective color. Furthermore, these two colors shift depending on angle of view. (Due to variations in the firing process, individual results can never be exactly reproduced; each piece of fused dichroic glass is unique.)