The Story of the Mask.

The idea of a 3-D Mardi Gras mask came to me in Nov. 2012. Our nephew was getting married in Florida and it so happens that his bride collects Mardi Gras masks. I asked myself why I couldn’t make for them a stained glass mask as a gift. Review of the internet revealed nothing in a 3-D format that I could find let alone design. Well, as necessity becomes the mother of invention, I proceeded with trial and error and created a design, acquired a mannequin head, made a template, and away I went. Each geometric piece of glass has to be cut multiple times in order to lay evenly over the underlying facial contour. Each is then wrapped in copper foil and then soldered to its neighbor with the facial curve occurring at the solder joints. The larger, more complex masks can take up to 50-60 hours of work each.