We talked to husband and wife glassblowing team Jaime Lionel and Etchin Gretchen, collectively known as Deranged Lion Glassworks, about their love for glassblowing and for one another. Jaime and Gretchen work as a team to create amazing pieces with distinctive etched designs. The methods that that they use to achieve these hand-drawn designs results in their unique and signature appearance.
Deranged Lion Glassworks started with Jaime Lionel. When he was younger he saw his first inside-out pipe and was blown away by the visual quality of the design, and what could potentially be achieved with glass as a medium. Jaime had a background as a machinist, and he had an affinity for playing with fire, so glassblowing was naturally quite attractive to him. The first time that Jaime tried his hand at blowing was in 2006, and he dabbled in it for a while until embracing the art full-time in 2011.
When Jaime Lionel first started blowing glass, a blower named Paul Farley of Pure Organics Glass acted as an early mentor to Jaime and sold him his first torch. Jaime used YouTube videos and online resource to learn fundamental techniques. Within a year of becoming a full-time glassblower, Jaime met Gretchen and they were soon married and began working together on pieces. Gretchen embraced hand-drawn cold work and took on the name Etchin Gretchin, and together they began selling their pieces under the name Deranged Lion Glass, which was taken partly from Jaime's middle name "Lionel", and that much of Jaime's family thought he was crazy for trying to pursue art as a full-time career.
Now, Deranged Lion Glass is working out of their own studio for the first time in over seven years. They live in Ashville, NC where there is a booming cannabis glass industry centered around various artists who have made the area their home. Deranged Lion Glass is pushing the boundaries of what their can do with their hybrid hot work and cold work techniques. They've developed a method for creating fumed etching designs where Gretchen draws designs with a titanium rod which is fumed over, the titanium resists the fuming in much that same way that wax will resist water colors, so they've named the tech "Fume Resist". Deranged Lion Glass' fume resist tech produces astonishing results with distinctive designs that couldn't be mistaken for anyone else's work.
Deranged Lion Glass is continuing to push the envelope of their abilities in this medium. Lately Jaime has been exploring mixed mediums and is incorporating some of the skills that he learned as a machinist to create hand-crafted dabbing tools and knives. In the future Deranged Lion Glass wants to learn more sculptural techniques and would like to explore texturing glass with textures resembling wood grain or worked metal. You can check out all of their amazing work over at the Deranged Lion Glass Instagram page.
