Instead of choosing a kitchen or bathroom countertop from granite, wood or laminate, consider a new alternative: glass.
Glass countertops offer a sleek, icy finish, and can be embedded with whimsical colours or simply left with a clear, pale-green tint. Like rippling waves on the ocean, the glass's texture can also range from calm and flat to rocky and wild.
Bertrand Charest, co-founder of Thinkglass, a glass manufacturer in Boisbriand, Que., says there's no worry about chipping the surface. "After 11/2 inches, glass becomes hard like a stone," he explains of Thinkglass's countertops, which are sold for homes and businesses around the world.
When Charest started Thinkglass 10 years ago with glass artist Michel Mailhot, it was just "the two of us in a completely empty room," he said. Now, more than a decade later, Charest and the artist Mailhot have a 30,000-square-foot factory in Boisbriand near Mirabel, with 18 ovens and 27 employees.
Browns Shoes in Montreal has a Thinkglass countertop that is sleek and clear. The interior decorator Julie Thibodeau, who chose it, likes glass for its versatility. "It can (also) be more like a sculpture."
At Tribe Hyperclub, the bar made by Thinkglass has a completely different look: The surface glows with blue lights, thanks to LED light panels.
Glass can be customized according to size, shape and design. Edges can be made straight, curved, or irregular, while colour and texture are also variable. To achieve desired thickness, glass sheets are fused together.
"There's no limit -- it's only the imagination," says Thibodeau.
A couple living in Habitat 67 purchased a Thinkglass countertop, artistic glass sliding door panels, a glass table and glass flooring.
With its extensive custom product line, 60 per cent of Thinkglass manufacturing is for home furnishings.
But glass can be quite a pricey indulgence, with a base cost of $200 to $250 per square foot, compared with granite, which can run at about $50 to $100 a square foot, or laminate, which costs about $25 to $50 per square foot. And if you ask Mailhot to add his colourful abstract expressionist designs, add 25 per cent to the cost of a countertop.
Mailhot transforms plain glass sheets into artworks -- with organically shaped surfaces and swirled colours melted through -- by heating the pieces in an electric oven in a process known as cast glass (thermoforming). Ironically, the oven looks a lot like an industrial-size freezer filled with plaster and sand.
To make a piece, Mailhot, whose work is inspired by Quebec artist Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923-2002), paints on a pane of glass. Before putting the glass in the oven, he swishes around the grains of sand inside the oven -- this will give the glass its texture. Then the painted glass is placed on top of the sand, heated, removed, polished, and voila! A masterpiece.
When the artistic glass is illuminated by a lamp, a sun-filled window or by LEDs, the colourful patterns come alive. "It's all about movement and nature's textures," Mailhot says. "Vegetation, minerals and ocean waves."
Visit www.thinkglass.com for more information.
-- Canwest News Service
