This bold circular black and white platter has been created by glass designer Shannon Shepherd.

In this piece, Shannon has blended her love of of the Pacific West Coast wildlife with her passion for glass and appreciation of First Nations art motifs.

To create this piece, alternate layers of black and white individually cut glass are placed one on top of another to form a Killer whale design. Once the design is created, the glass is placed in a kiln. Here, each piece of glass melts together in a process called fusing. This process, along with the cooling down period takes about 15 hours.

The next stage is called slumping, this is where the now fused glass plate is placed back into the kiln. It rests on a mold that the heated glass will slump into to give it the shallow bowl form of a platter, a process that takes another 15 hours.