At sunrise the Miami Beach boardwalk awakes to the pounding of feet and the rolling of bikes; no, not from the tourists, from the vendors getting ready for a long day in the sun. They set up shop on the cement posts and make-shift tents dotting the boardwalk from 41st street to 5th street. There they toil from dawn till dusk vending their wares.
There are two vendors specifically located on the boardwalk just between the Lincoln Rd beach access and 18th street. They are Joe Couroy and Gregory Trecartin. They make and sell hand-made jewelry-mostly necklaces. It isn't so much as to what they sell inasmuch as how it is made. And while this technology is as much as five years old, just now it seems to be catching the eyes of the tourists.
What is it? Diacyrlic Glass: Dia is from Greek mythology meaning 'bright sky' and crylic also from Greek and the Mongolian and Serbo-Croat languages-denoting letters. And this jewelry does speak to us in its own language. It glitters like the sun with the depth of a shadow box. Here's how it's made.
Typically, parts of the glass are masked to create different designs. The one millimeter-thick sheet of glass is placed in a vacuum and then positively charged. Then, fine powdered metals are introduced; they in turn are negatively charged. The negative metals are attracted to the positive glass. The result is a bonding of the metals to the upper layer of the glass. Subsequently, the glass is fired, essentially burning away the masks; then cooled effectively bonding the two as one.
From this base a variety of different glasses can be layered over the Diacyrlic glass and introduced back into the kiln in a heat bonding procedure giving the piece depth.
The process is a little bit of both art and science, but the result is always the same…sparkling.
For more information please visit: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Diacrylic+glass&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_en___US344&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=D94nS_vYIsm0tgeNrJDFCw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CCEQsAQwAw
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