Glass Engraving

By Jharna Shahani

Khajuraho Temple 

We are living in a machine-like worldtoday, where machines are taking the place of handmade art, especiallyengraving. Still there are few artists like Vijay Kharkar, who are striving tokeep the art of engraving alive.

Glass engraving is a form of decorative glasswork that involves incising adesign on to a glass surface, by cutting grooves into it. Diamond coated or Tungstone Carbidestylus, Stone or Copper wheels used with a lathe machine, hand-held rotarydrill and Diamond coated burrs are tools, which when used with the right skill producesuch attractive and mesmerizing designs that it’s difficult to get your eyesoff such artistic pieces.

Goddess on Crystal glass 

14 years ago, Vijay Kharkar, a Punebased artist left his pencil and brush and adopted the hand-held rotary drill tobegin working on glass engraving. At 74, there is no end to his enthusiasm.Without any formal training, but armed with the essential tools of hard work, experimentationand practice, Kharkar has developed his own technique and mastered the art. Hisinspiration and learning comes from the works of eminent engravers like WaylandH. Cato from the U.S., James Denison from UK, Catherine Miller fromWest Virginia and master glass engraver Max Erlacher.

Vijay Kharkar

Glass being a very versatile medium can beused in different ways in engraving and presents excellent results; this iswhat Vijay Kharkar realized and began experimenting with different tools and themeslike portraits, landscapes, animals, floral designs and old sculptures. The outcomeof these experiments is the number of awards and accolades he has collected forhis work, not only in India, but from all over the world.

Sun Temple

A precision-driven process, glassengraving involves utmostconcentration and avery steady hand; being a non reversible process, mistakes are not permissible.With such inherent challenges, Vijay Kharkar faced many challenges like hiswork ‘OldAge’ required rough texture to depictagony and ‘Amorous Couple’ neededa softer texture to incorporate the mood. The spray of water and the huge rocksvisible through the spray in ‘Niagara’needed numerous trials with a variety of tools. ‘Pieta’ demanded a marble sculpture effect and matching thepicture on two glass sheets to show the 3D effect. He says that his mostchallenging works were ‘Pieta’ and ‘Veiled Beauty’.

  Veiled Beauty

 Pieta

With acid etching fast replacing theart of engraving, Vijay Kharkar suggests young artists to be exposed to thisart form via exhibitions, displaying photographs on blogs, publishing links tothe works of great glass engravers, holding competitions for glass engravers toencourage young artists to take up this art form and also by creating awarenessin the public about this art.

 Old Age

 Amorous Couple

Niagara Falls

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