At First Glance,

I thought this was a piece of wood, 

 with moss and other small plants that had colonised it, but it was not so, French artist Julie Gonce's artworks imitate the beauty and detail of natural forms, but made of glass, Gonce has been creating her glossy sculptures since 1997, 

 and is passionate about preserving ancient French glassmaking techniques and uses traditional methods including glassblowing, lampworking, and glass beadmaking,

when glassblowing, Gonce brings a rod of glass up to the required temperature and blows air into it to create a voluminous shape, Her lampworking involves two rods of glass which are brought together and stretched and sculpted into a chosen object, She then uses a glass beading technique which involves winding molten glass around a metal rod which she then cools and draws glass beads from,

 I am stunned to see how she makes each individual bubble on the fronds,

 using two different types of glass (borosilicate and soda-lime), Gonce fuses her sculptures with natural forms: wood, seeds, mushrooms, paper, textiles, metals, bones, and even feathers, “Stitching is present in all of my sculptures, that’s how the materials are bound,” she explains,

torchworking requires Gonce to be in perfect command of her body, “At the heart of all of my creations, there is always the pleasure of seeing the flame and the glass melting,” says Gonce. “What I love about glass work is that there is nothing between the glass and the flame but the torch worker’s hands.”

Gonce is currently exhibiting her sculptures at Galerie Collection in Paris, what amazing attention to detail, the pictures above by Gonce.