CGS 2026 Amanda Moriarty Prize winner announced

This year’s winner of the 2026 Contemporary Glass Society (CGS) Amanda Moriarty Prize is Izzy Cheyne Jones. Izzy will be mentored by Emma Woffenden over the coming months thanks to this award that offers tailored training in contemporary glass to a glass artist.

Speaking about the prize, Izzy said, “I am delighted to have the chance to work with Emma and learn more about her practice. As an emerging artist looking to develop my practice and deepen my knowledge of glass, getting this opportunity means a great deal.”

Izzy, a Leeds-based recent graduate in Fine Art with Contemporary Cultural Theory, finds inspiration in the fields of architecture, urban planning and psychogeography. She fashions her approach to drawing and sculpture after how an architect considers the design and utility of a building, keeping the spatial relationship with an audience in mind.

To explore the emotional dimension of architecture in her practice, she uses materials that engage in the binary of the utilitarian and the ornamental. She is primarily drawn to working within the expanded field of sculpture, drawing influences from interdisciplinary methods such as conceptual drawing or painting. Izzy’s most recent work centres around recording and presenting the psychic and emotional experiences of space, site, and place. She is interested in investigating how form and gesture could express the feeling of familial and repetitive movement.

In 2017, Amanda Moriarty, a long-serving Board member and Honorary Treasurer of the CGS, passed away. To celebrate her enthusiasm and encouragement of glassmaking, CGS offers this annual prize in her memory.

Many thanks to Emma Woffenden for offering her time and expertise for this year’s award.