Seven Wells

The day room looks onto a car park. That is the honest description of the site, and it determined everything: the window had to be dense enough to stop the view and open enough not to make the room dark, and it had to work for people who were sitting still, often for hours, often not well.

The answer was a field of clear quarries with seven silver-stained roundels set into it at seated eye level. Standing up, you look over the roundels and out. Sitting down, they are exactly in front of you.

Four firings for one yellow

Silver stain is the only true stain in the craft — everything else called stain is paint. Silver nitrate is applied to the back of the glass and fired, and the silver ions exchange into the glass itself. The colour that comes out depends on the glass, the thickness of the application and the temperature, and it is not reliably predictable. Roundel 1 went through the kiln four times. The first was lemon, the second straw, the third nearly right, the fourth right.

The upside-down roundel

Roundel 6 shows the well head at Balnagarrow inverted, as it appears in the water of the well itself. Two members of staff told us it was in wrong before it had been in a fortnight. It is now the thing the room is known for.