The making of SCVO awards 2019

The Design

The SCVO awards are made from Scottish Ash and have a natural edge to give them a natural look but still have a cutting edge design by incorporating the fused glass. The front edge of the Ash has been carved into an ‘S’ shape to link in with the ‘S’ in Scottish.  The different categories of awards have their own colour scheme.  The awards have grown from strength to strength each year and new categories have been added so there is now a total of 9 categories.  The design of the people’s choice award is different from the others as it has a fused glass heart with the colours from all the categories incorporated into the design.  The heart design was chosen to represent how much each entry touched people’s hearts with their personal stories.

Making the fused glass sections

When making these SCVO awards I always make the glass section first. I start with a clear piece of glass cut to size and shape, then I layer the coloured glass on top of this base glass.  I use a mix of transparent and opaque glass to get a dramatic effect. Once all the glass is cut to size it is cleaned then put into the kiln to fire and the firing process takes 24hrs to complete.

Making the wooden section of the award

Once the glass has been removed from the kiln I start work on the wooden section of the award.

I use kiln dried Scottish Ash which still has a natural edge and the bark left on. The Ash is cut to size and machined to the correct thickness.  The ‘S’ shape is then hand carved to give it some texture then smoked black to emphasise the ‘S’ shape.  Each Ash block is then sanded until the desired finished is achieved.  These finished Ash sections of the awards are oiled over a period of 4 days and then some beeswax is applied to finish them off.

Engraving

Now that the fused glass sections have been fired and cooled they are now ready to be engraved.  I do all the engraving in-house which is perfect for making Harmonies in Wood the one stop shop for awards.  Once each glass section has been engraved I colour fill the engraving to make it stand out even more. With these SCVO awards, the SCVO logo is engraved then colour filled in silver.

Once all the glass is engraved, I start engraving the winners name and the categories onto engraving plates, this is the perfect finishing touch for each award.

Assembly of wood and fused glass sections.

Now all the parts are ready I start to assemble each award.  The fused glass panels are attached to the Ash section and the engraving plate with the winners name is attached to the front of each Ash section.

All the awards are photographed then carefully wrapped. Once wrapped, each award is put into a Harmonies in Wood jute bag.  This is the perfect way for the awards to travel home safely with the winners.