By MARK T. MASClAROlTE

The scene opens as you wash up for dinner at a wall-hung floating vanity made of heavy curved glass inlaid with 24-karat gold. Entering a hallway, you take note of the decorative polished brass handrail fronting walls of deeply carved, laminated safety glass. You step through full-height glass-panel doors to the dining room. Its frosty, golden glass walls sandblasted and airbrushed in the style of Henri Rousseau radiate Art Deco glamour.

Gene Negrin's company, Galaxy Glass & Stone, in Fairfield, New Jersey, makes all these creations and much more for clients as diverse as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Versace, Givenchy, Trump Plaza and Cunard. Galaxy also does a lot of work for yacht owners, but according to Negrin, the yacht industry has been slow to exploit the possibilities of cutting-edge glass technologies.

Glass has served utilitarian roles at sea for hundreds of years as glazing for windows, portlights and skylights, and as components in lighting fixtures. Over the last20 years, however, changes in the typical yacht profile and interior as w e as changes in owner expectations, have challenged glass manufacturers to come up with new solutions and new materials.

Like ships, large yachts have the volume and overhead heights to accept designs that incorporate large pieces of window glass and the various combinations of draperies and curtains needed to dress them. But it is often difficult for designers to deal with the non standard window shapes styled into contemporary yachts. In large vessels, designers have the luxury of being able to build out areas surrounding the windows or protlights to a degree that affords nearly vertical interior surfaces. Into these cases areas, layers of curtains and shades can be installed, sometimes with backlighting for dramatic effect at night.

Smaller yachts, however, or those with highly curved surfaces, do not lend themselves well to these kinds of solutions. Window treatments on such boats have been either hopelessly simplistic or simply nonexistent, leaving designers wanting for an appropriate remedy to control light's attendant heat buildup and bleaching effects, and to provide privacy for passengers during evening hours. This becomes especially difficult for fast boats or for performance sailing yachts where weightt is a critical issue.

A product developed a number of years ago by the Taliq Corporation for use in privacy panels, marketed under the trade name Varilite™, uses a polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) film that could be sandwiched between sheets of glass or plastic. The resulting laminated product was translucent, allowing light to pass through while providing privacy in much the same way as a sheet of sandblasted glass. When an electric current was applied to the film, however, this new material instantly became transparent.