Julie 1: Animals - A Foundation in Soft Glass Sculpture
Sculpting the Human Form in Soft & Borosilicate Glass
Runtime: 12 demonstrations | 238 minutes
Skill level: Beginner / early learner
Glass: Soft glass
Zurich Glass School founder Dr Julie Anne Denton presents a foundation course in small-scale soft glass sculpture, using a playful family of animals to teach the fundamental hand skills, heat control and construction principles needed to begin working confidently off-mandrel.
Designed for beginners and early learners, Animals is not really about learning to reproduce a collection of penguins, elephants, owls, flamingos and fish. Each creature presents a different making problem, allowing you to practise the same core sculptural principles in increasingly varied ways.
You will learn how to gather and shape hot glass, join forms together, add details, control heat across different areas of a sculpture and use tools without allowing the piece to collapse or move off-centre. Hot and cold punties, glass tripods, mashers, shears and simple hand tools gradually become part of your working vocabulary.
What you will learn
- Gather and shape soft glass for small-scale sculptural forms
- Build simple three-dimensional animals off-mandrel
- Understand how heat placement affects form and stability
- Join separate components while maintaining control of the whole sculpture
- Use hot and cold punties appropriately during construction
- Create temporary glass supports and tripods
- Work with mashers, shears and simple sculpting tools
- Add character through proportion, positioning and small details
- Recognise why forms move, distort or crack—and how to respond
- Revisit the same subject using different construction approaches
- Develop greater confidence troubleshooting your own work
- Begin adapting learned techniques into creatures and forms of your own
A particularly important part of the course is revisiting things that do not quite work.
Rather than presenting twelve immaculate demonstrations and pretending glass always behaves itself, several lessons deliberately return to earlier animals to examine mistakes, troubleshoot construction and try alternative solutions. The owl, elephant, penguin and fish become opportunities to understand why something happened rather than simply being told what to do next.
As the course progresses, the animals become more complex. Simple forms establish control; subsequent variations introduce more demanding construction, balance and detail. The aim is to build transferable skills rather than a collection of recipes.
Although demonstrated primarily in soft glass, the underlying sculptural principles can also be applied to borosilicate. The material behaves differently under heat, but the fundamental thinking—construction, balance, observation and controlled joining—remains relevant.
Your learning resources
Your E-course includes the Animal Fundamentals Course Notes & Student Guide, together with downloadable supporting material designed for use alongside the demonstrations.
With Tier C you will also receive a complimentary 30-minute Development Session with Dr Julie Anne Denton, giving you an opportunity to discuss your own work, troubleshoot difficult areas together and receive individual guidance as you progress through the course.
Basic and Standard E-course access (Tiers A & B) is provided for six months, allowing plenty of time to watch, practice, repeat difficult sections and return to the demonstrations as your skills develop, should you need lifetime access choose our Mastery Tier C. After purchase, access may take up to 24 hours to activate. Learning options and access details are outlined in the Learning Tiers section.
Glass sculpture takes practice. Pieces may crack. A join may be too cold. An animal may develop a personality you weren't expecting. Those moments are useful because they teach you to read what the material is doing and make better decisions the next time.
Learn the technique. Understand why it works. Then make it your own.
By the end of Julie 1: Animals, the goal is not simply to know how to make an elephant or penguin. It is to have established a practical foundation in small-scale sculpture that you can begin applying to creatures of your own.
Different animals. Same fundamental skills.
Requirements: Your own torch or access to a flameworking studio
Runtime & Resources: 12 demonstrations | 238 minutes + 17-page Student Guide + supporting resources + Development consultation
Our Learning Tier System - Graduated Support
Learning Tiers
Choose the level of access and support that best suits how you like to learn.
All tiers include access to the full E-demo; the difference lies in the duration of access and the level of support provided.Tier A — Watch Only
A self-led option for focused viewing and inspiration.
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Watch-only access to the full demo for 6 months
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Learn at your own pace with pause and replay functionality
Best suited to students who want to explore the technique independently, without additional materials or mentoring.
Tier B — Supported Learning
For learners who value reference material alongside the video.
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Everything included in Tier A
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Complimentary downloadable course materials
(reference images, notes, diagrams, and/or process guides) -
Watch-only access for 6 months
Ideal for students who want structure and resources to support practice at the torch.
Tier C — Mentored & Certified
A guided learning experience with personal support and lasting recognition.
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Everything included in Tier B
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Extended access for life to the demo
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30-minute one-to-one online consultation with Zurich Glass School
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Official printed Certificate of Completion, posted to you from Switzerland
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Priority support during your learning period
Designed for students seeking guidance, confidence, and formal recognition of their learning.
Access is activated after purchase and may take up to 24 hours.
Consultations included in Tier C must be booked within six months of purchase.-
About Dr Julie Anne Denton
Dr Julie Anne Denton is a Manx-born glass artist, educator, researcher and former glass arts journalist based in Zurich, Switzerland. Trained in the Italian tradition of flameworking, her practice spans soft and borosilicate flameworking, sandcasting and sculptural glass. She holds a PhD from the University of Sunderland and National Glass Centre, where her practice-led research developed repeatable methods for integrating flameworked inclusions within and onto sandcast glass forms.
Founder of Zurich Glass School, Julie has taught, lectured and demonstrated internationally, developing an educational approach centred on observation, material understanding and explaining not simply how a technique works, but why. As a contributing writer for Glass Art and The Flow magazines, she profiled internationally recognised artists and documented developments across contemporary glass. Her own work draws upon the human figure, folklore, archaeology and the expressive possibilities of glass, with figurative sculpture forming a recurring thread throughout her artistic practice.