Stained Glass

Carved Glass

Structural Glass

ORNAMENTAL GLASS ADDS CLASS TO PLAIN WINDOWPANES

HERBERT WEISS, A RETIRED Transit cop who spent 20 years on the force, has made a second career out of his lifelong passion for sandblasting delicate images into glass. From the basement of his home on Strickland Avenue in Mill Basin, the 58-year old artist who studied aerospace engineering at Brooklyn Polytechnic University and worked for a time building jet aircraft- custom designs ornamental glass for windows, doors, cabinets and staircases. "When I was a cop, I started making lamps just because I love physics and chemistry. I got on TV a couple of times because back then anybody who was a New York City cop was generally considered to be illiterate and uncultured" says Weiss. "Then I started selling them and now it's all I do." His 25-year-old company, Concepts in Glass, does more than 90 percent of its business in home glass design. But his work also includes the 25 square foot carved police shield (the largestart glass in

the world). It adorns the Detectives' Endowment Association headquarters at 26 Thomas Street in Manhattan; a 20- square-foot stained-glass lobster that hangs from the ceiling at Original Captain's Quarters restaurant on Avenue U; and the fish-on-the-glass entrance to Randazzo's, the venerable Sheepshead Bay clam house. "We carve things that are eight inches small or things that cover the entire wall of a restaurant," says Weiss. "Bring me anything that can be photographed, and we'll replicate its exact image, any size you want, and carve it onto any kind of glass you want." The technique that Weiss employs is similar, he says, to carving names into stone. His Russian-born associate artist, Svetlana Semenova, first drafts an exact reproduction of an image. Weiss then covers the glass with the drawing and slowly sand- blasts and carves it. Another technique Weiss uses gives the glass a special pebbled or frosted look. Weiss first pits the entire surface of the glass with his sandblaster, then applies a thick coat of melted animal hide glue to the surface. As the glue dries, it pulls a paper-thin quantity of glass off the surface, leaving the glass beneath smooth and pebbled, like a thin sheet of pond ice.

The most frequent commission that Weiss gets is for engravings of flowers and birds, but his portfolio includes business logos, pet dogs, gamebirds, and even a deer that a hunter shot upstate and brought to Brooklyn tied on the roof of his car. Jokes the mustachioed Weiss: "We did such an exact copy that he told us he didn't have to stuff and mount it." Weiss generally asks for $80 per square foot of glass. For the most commonly requested job, a window of six square feet with one engraving on it, he asks $480. But, as he is always willing to make a deal, Weiss has charged as 1ittle as $40.00 for small stained-glass casement and as much as $20,000 for a glass wall of intricate design. Business is good, and Weiss truly enjoys his work. "Really it's just a hobby that's spun out of control," he says. "It's almost unbelievable that all this beautiful work is coming out of a little house in Mill Basin." Concepts in Glass, 6310 Strickland Avenue (968-8157). Examples of Weiss and Semenova's work are displayed on their website, www.conceptsinglass.com

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