The theme of the Society of Glass Technology’s (SGT) 2023 annual conference is Sustainability in Glass. The organisers are calling for prospective presenters to send abstracts by 15 June 2023.
The SGT conference takes place in Cambridge, UK, from 4-6 September 2023.
A History and Heritage themed session will span two days, starting at 12.30pm on 5 September until 2pm on 6 September (including lunch on both days). It is hoped to have a hybrid event, with online participation by an international audience.
SGT states: “We invite delegates to join us in exploring the lively and diverse, present and future possibilities for communicating glass in all its forms through art, craft and design, history, research and education. Keynote lecturers are being approached, but presentations from students, artists, researchers and academics in the field, based around the following and any related themes, are warmly encouraged.”
Day 1: Tuesday 5 September 12.30-5pm
The proposed focus is on Glass Knowledge acquisition and transmission: through word of mouth, in-house training, literature, craft and trade bodies and, latterly, formal education, covering both practical and technical elements of glass teaching. National glass collections, publications and library resources, academic research and reconstructive modelling, glass displays, online resources and international links are all legitimate topics.
Day 2: Wednesday 6 September 9am-12.30pm
Focusing on glass arts, crafts and design, including the development of practical glass making; the preservation and safeguarding of historical glass skills promoted through UNESCO special status; town twinning projects, national and international glass prizes and funding to support glass practitioners.
The event will be divided into four themed sessions, two each day, each offering one 40-minute slot on a keynote topic and two 20-minute talks for more focused presentations by students or emerging research speakers.
It is hoped to offer opportunities for round table discussions and cross-fertilisation between those attending the different conference sessions.
To present, please submit a 250-word abstract online or email it with your contact details and keywords to: Christine@sgt.org by 15 June 2023.
Following successful admission to the conference, SGT will invite submission of papers for publication (3000-4000 words).
Conference fees for delegates and presenters, including tea, coffee and lunch breaks are:
2 days Full Price Standard £95
1 day Full Price Standard £50
2 days Student £75
1 day Student £40.
The conference banquet on the evening of 5 September takes place at Corpus Christi College and is £70 per person.
On-site accommodation is available at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB3 0DF.
The US-based Museum of Glass has launched a glass exhibition with opportunities alongside each exhibit for children to create, move and play. The show, ‘Illuminate: Glass Art for Early Learners’, is on now until Spring 2024.
Illuminate is an exhibition for kids and their grown-ups that explores what makes glass a unique art material – the ability to capture and manipulate light. Visitors can create their own design with a large, illuminated peg board, make art from shadows, and discover what makes glass glow in the dark.
Museum curator Katie Buckingham commented, “The most important part of early learning is that it is fuelled by exploring together. As someone who became a parent during the pandemic, I relish opportunities to be out exploring the world with my own toddler. It is such a privilege to look at the Museum’s collection from this perspective. Glass might seem too fragile for early learners, but its ability to work with light opens space for all ages to learn about the world around them. I hope that this exhibition is a space where visitors of all ages, especially kids, can experience glass and be creative.”
The exhibition will unfold through artworks created by Dan Bancila, Heike Brachlow, Dale Chihuly, Nikola Dimitrijevic, Etsuko Ichikawa, John Kiley, Dominick Labino, Flora C Mace, Richard Royal, Lisabeth Sterling, Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend, Meredith Wenzel, Veruska Vagen, František Vizner and more.
“While glass is fine art, and delicate, it can also be an invaluable teaching medium for early learners and their families,” said Museum of Glass executive director Debbie Lenk.
The Illuminate exhibition has been developed in consultation with Alysia Jines, programme manager at non-profit Greentrike for the Children’s Museum of Tacoma. In partnership with the Museum of Glass, the Children’s Museum of Tacoma will display a temporary exhibition featuring artwork from the Museum of Glass Kids Design Glass programme for the duration of Illuminate.
Children’s Museum child visitors can submit drawings for Kids Design Glass consideration. On 28 October 2023, the Museum of Glass hot shop team will blow a piece inspired by one of these drawings.
The Museum of Glass is at: 1801 Dock Street, Tacoma, WA 98402, USA. Find out more via the website.
Image: Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend’s ‘Pro Rata Lyricism’ features handblown roundels, etched glass, lead fabrication with overlays and metals in an ash frame. It is part of the collection of the Museum of Glass (gift of David Huchthausen). Photo courtesy of the artist.
Dr Anna Moran delves into the work and inspirations of the artists in this show, on until 20 August 2023 at Dublin Castle. Dr Moran lectures on the history of craft and design at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin.
Since its inception in 2017, the Ireland Glass Biennale (IGB) has developed into a key event in the international glass calendar. Following the traditional biennale format, IGB 2023 has been curated following an open call during which 51artists were selected from over 200 submissions by an international jury. Each bringing expertise from their respective worlds of commercial galleries, museums, glass education and practice, the IGB 2023 jury comprised Katya Heller, Director at Heller Gallery, New York; Zhang Lin, founder and president of the Shanghai Museum of Glass; Kim Mawhinney, Senior Curator of Art at National Museums Northern Ireland, and Irish artist and educator, Karen Donnellan.
Bringing together makers from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and North and South America – including both established and emerging talent – the incredible range of creative output stemming from artists working with glass can be sensed at this large show. Film- and performance-based work and wall-hung neon pieces are presented alongside large scale installations and smaller works made using glass as well as found objects and mixed media. Led by Dr Caroline Madden, lecturer in glass at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, IGB is part of a much larger Creative Europe funded project, ‘Imagining Sustainable Glass Network Europe’ (ISGNE), which has worked towards creating connections between glass schools and studios across Europe, funding training for glassmakers, highlighting glass making skill as part of our intangible heritage and presenting biennales such as this one.
Underpinning much of the work on display is purposeful and meaningful engagement with the materiality of glass. Its transparency, ductility and fragility, combined with its seemingly contradictory qualities of strength, solidity and hardness, form a context for experimentation and a rich seam of exploration for many of the makers represented. The Northern Ireland-based artist, Helen Hancock, is one such maker. She explores what happens when glass is infused with breastmilk, umbilical cords, milk teeth or ashes, telling us that milk teeth create an extraordinary bloom of gold colour when saturated into glass, while breast-milk creates a web-like pattern of white threads, which is ‘unique each time’ (IGB Catalogue, 2023, p58). Drawing on her other role as a breastfeeding counsellor, her glass practice is focused on women’s experiences, and their stories of trauma in particular. Using these intensely resonant glass materials, Hancock makes very personal pieces, informed by the private, healing dialogue between her and the women she has worked with.
Helen Hancock’s ‘Nature does not Bloom in Private’ (2022) is made from breast milk infused into molten glass. Photo by the artist.
For Irish artist Laura Quinn, it is the interface between people and glass that has provided a guiding focus. Informed by Michael Polanyi’s writings on tacit knowledge, Quinn urges observers to explore the ‘silent knowledge of the material’ through sight and touch, provoking and welcoming human engagement (IGB Catalogue, 2023, p92). The pieces Haptic Bellows I & II each feature over 150 individually lampworked leaf-like and spiked forms embedded in a silicone membrane, which encourage the viewer to reach out and touch, all the while inviting reflection on the nature of glass and its ability to withstand such contact.
Laura Quinn’s ‘Haptic Bellows I & II’ comprise blown and cut and polished glass. Photo: Sylvain Deleu.
A very different approach to the materiality of glass is seen in the work of German-born Seattle-based Anna Mlasowsky. With a keen awareness of the ways in which glass exists across a spectrum of physical states – solid, fluid, transparent and ‘unyieldingly hard yet precariously fragile’ – Mlasoswky creates glass objects which are used or ‘activated’ in her video- and performance-based work (IGB Catalogue, 2023, p82). In performances such as 4 Feet Apart and On * Venus, the material properties of glass are used thought provokingly as a mediator through which to navigate ideas around womanhood, otherness, queerness, unbelonging and disobedience. Video of 4 Feet Apart available via this link.
Anna Mlasowsky’s ‘4 Feet Apart’ is a 20-minute performance by Lilia Ossiek and Alba Maria Thomas Alvarez. Camera: Sebastian Knorr and Bernhard Kübel.
The intrinsic characteristics of glass, particularly its fragility and transparency, are also used creatively in the work of Dutch-based Krista Israel. Using glass lampworking techniques, in combination with other materials, such as porcelain and found objects, Israel’s work conveys ideas around wellbeing and seeks to further probe, in her own words, ‘the existential experience of contemporary society’ (IGB Catalogue, 2023, p66). An ironic humour pervades her piece, Without Title II, which both draws in and intrigues, challenging the viewer to contemplate the pose and gilded palms of the toy-like figure on its knees.
Krista Israel’s ‘Without Title II’ is made from mixed media, glass, porcelain and 23ct gold. Photo by the artist.
A deep and intuitive connection between the maker and their material comes to the fore in many of the works on display, each resonant of the patient, skilled work required in their making. In a world which is increasingly uncertain and precarious, London-based artist Sarah Wiberley finds a ‘fleeting sense of control’ in the execution of time-consuming, traditional techniques (IGB Catalogue, 2023, p120). Underscored by an innate understanding of colour, Wiberley’s precise patterning evokes a welcome sense of calmness and order.
Sarah Wiberley’s ‘Spinning-Around’ (2020).comprises blown, carved glass. Photo: Agata Pec.
For French artist Valérie Rey, the painstaking processes involved in adorning rescued pieces of nature that she feels are forgotten and undervalued – such as fallen trees, fungi, walnut shells – are therapeutically meditative. Rey describes the application of gold leaf as ‘sensual’, while there is a calming, contemplative quality to the repetition involved in forming and shaping hundreds of glass beads ‘like tiny beings, similar but in reality all different and once assembled, form a colony, a people’ (IGB Catalogue, 2023). See main feature image.
Carrie Fertig’s video performance ‘Plummet’ features glass and mixed media. Photo: Rob Page.
Precariousness – whether in relation to the environment or a broader sense of social uncertainty – exists as an undercurrent in many of the works on display. For Carrie Fertig, an artist based in Scotland, the climate crisis looms in the form of a large plumb bob comprised of thousands of hanging glass icicles. Her video performance, entitled Plummet, shows the unwieldy plumb bob, symbolic of melting ice, tethered awkwardly to the artist. When the artist moves, this causes the plumb bob to swing dangerously, the icicles clashing into each other, ringing a loud roar denoting an ending, ‘as inescapable as the consequences of our behaviour’ (IGB Catalogue, 2023, p52). Importantly, each of the icicles used in Plummet has been recycled, having been used in previous performances by Fertig.
Reusing glass is a practice also seen in the work of other artists exhibiting at IGB 2023, such as Czech artist Michaela Spruzinova, who recycles various pieces of glass in the creation of her work, and American-Austrian artist Rebecca Tanda, who reworks car window glass into organic forms.
Taking all of the work shown at this large group show into consideration, a commonality that arises is a rich and meaningful engagement with the materiality of glass. Closer examination rewards the observer, whether it is Hancock’s breast-milk infused glass or the tender coat of lampworked glass that envelops Israel’s figurative piece, the mesmerising beaded surface of Rey’s fungi or the dense forest of leaf-like forms on Quinn’s sculptural forms that call out to be touched. It is there you will sense the incredible process of correspondence – the back and forth between the maker and their material – creating an intuitive, innate connection that is palpable in each and every piece in this important exhibition.
The Irish Glass Biennale 2023 exhibition is open to the public from 28 April until 20 August 2023 at the Coach House Gallery, Dublin Castle, Ireland. Free Admission. Find out more via the website.
Dr Anna Moran
Main feature image: Valérie Rey’s ‘Respect’ is made from glass and wood. Photo by the artist.
The latest Contemporary Glass Society (CGS) online exhibition features the themes of summer and flowers and is live now on the CGS website. Twenty glass artists are represented and they have used a wide range of techniques to create a diverse range of styles and subjects.
Some of the works are for sale direct from the artists, who were invited to share the pieces that they created for decorating garden borders or acting as a sculptural focal point. They are designed and made specifically for the great outdoors.
From elaborate mosaic spheres to bold arrows of cast glass to delicately formed fused glass lilies, there is something to suit all preferences and scales.
View all the artworks and find out full details of each one here.
This exhibition is live until 2 July 2023.
Image: ‘Cactus Garden’ is made from recycled and repurposed glass that has been fused, cold worked and bonded by the artist Marc Fresko.
Do you want to find out more about contemporary glass? All are welcome at the next Contemporary Glass Society (CGS) Discovery Day, where glass artists will talk about their processes and inspirations.
Organised by CGS, the next in this series of Discovery Days taking place around the country during 2023 will be held at impressive art gallery The Hepworth Wakefield on Saturday 17 June 2023.
Come to West Yorkshire to meet an amazing melange of glass artists talking about their work and lives as contemporary glass artists. You will have the opportunity to interact with professional creatives and to find out more about the creative industries. Meet and make new contacts with glass artists local to you.
The four fascinating speakers are both established artists and young emerging makers. One of these speakers is an international artist, joining the day virtually by Zoom. CGS is bringing some of the best of the world’s contemporary glass artists to Wakefield to excite and inspire everyone.
The speakers are:
Joanna Manousis, a British–American artist working in glass and mixed media sculpture
David Reekie, an internationally renowned glass artist specialising in lost wax cast glass who reflects on the human condition
Jahday Ford, a glass artist and designer from Bermuda but based in Manchester, who specialises in hot glass fabrication and mould design
Kristiina Uslar, a glass artist from Estonia who works mainly in pâte de verre.
This Discovery Day in Wakefield includes exploring the beautiful Hepworth Wakefield gallery inside, as well as the garden designed by Tom Stuart-Smith.
Glass artists attending are welcome to take part in a ‘Show and Tell’ session, bringing along a piece of their work and explaining the techniques and ideas behind it.
A Discovery Day offers participants the chance to explore the collaboration between heritage crafts and modern technology and to appreciate the value of glass not only as an artistic material but also its technical, scientific, historical and geographical importance.
Tickets cost £45 + booking fee (Early Bird price of £35 + booking fee available until 14 May 2023), which includes all the day’s events, refreshments and lunch. Tickets can be purchased via Eventbrite here.
The Hepworth Wakefield is at Gallery Walk, Wakefield, West Yorkshire, WF1 5AW. Website: https://hepworthwakefield.org
This Discovery Day is sponsored by the Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers Charity Fund, the Glass Manufacturers Educational Trust and Pearsons Glass.
Image: Some of the speakers for the Hepworth Wakefield Discovery Day and examples of their artwork.
Inverness Museum and Art Gallery will be celebrating the history of Caithness Glass with an exhibition of pieces donated by glass collector Dr Graham Cooley, opening in June 2023.
Over 350 items have been generously donated to the museum from the Graham Cooley Collection, most of which will be on display. From vases and bowls to thimbles and candlesticks, the range of goods designed and made by the company is impressive.
The first Caithness Glass factory opened in Wick, Caithness, in 1961. The aim was to provide much needed skilled employment opportunities and create a product that could be sold around the world.
The early designs by Domhnall ÓBroin showed a strong Scandinavian influence, with colours inspired by Highland landscapes. ÓBroin was followed by Colin Terris and other designers, who introduced more colours and patterns.
The products were popular and the company grew, establishing new factories in Oban in 1969, and Perth in 1979. In 1988 it took over the Wedgwood Crystal factory in King’s Lynn, Norfolk.
However, by 2004, the company could no longer compete with cheap imports and rising production costs. It was bought out of receivership by Edinburgh Crystal but went back into receivership in 2006. This time it was bought by Dartington Crystal, based in Devon. Sadly, all of the original factories have closed, but the Caithness brand is still owned by Dartington and operates from the Crieff Visitor Centre in Perthshire.
Graham Cooley is a 20th century art collector based in England. His collection is focused on the company’s art glass and tableware, rather than the paperweights which have become synonymous with the Caithness brand.
Alongside the exhibition, the book Caithness Glass: Loch, Heather & Peat, written by collectables expert and TV personality, Mark Hill, will be available to buy from the museum’s gift shop, along with some vintage pieces of Caithness Glass.
Most of the collection will be displayed in the Inverness Museum’s Foyer Gallery from 17 June to 19 September 2023.
Inverness Museum and Art Gallery is at Castle Wynd, Inverness, Highland, IV2 3EB, Scotland. Find out more via the website.
Image: Range of vases by Caithness Glass, designed by Domhnall ÓBroin in the 1960s.
Denmark’s Glasmuseet Ebeltoft opens its doors on 29 April 2023 with a new name and a new visual identity, following redecoration of the museum.
The museum of international glass art had been known as Glasmuseet Ebeltoft since 1986. Now, it will be called Glas with the subtitle ‘Museum of Glass Art’.
The name change marks the first step on the way to an ambitious, strategic development of the museum. Behind the new name lies a desire to sharpen the profile and clearly signal the core of the museum’s work: glass and the exploration of the material’s properties in an artistic context. It is about the unique qualities of glass, from liquid to solid, from hot to cold, the sensuality of the material, transparency, optics, colours, but also about building a bridge towards a wider art scene with glass as a point of departure.
“We must be a living and relevant museum for both the professionally interested glass enthusiasts and for visitors who are on holiday in the area and experience glass art for the first time,” explained the museum’s director Mikkel Hammer Elming.
“We want to share our interest and passion for glass with as many people as possible and create meaningful encounters with art. We see an increasing interest in glass in contemporary art. The exhibition with the artist duo Studio ThinkingHand will be a perfect example of how we want to explore glass as an artistic material in the future, and how we want to work on introducing glass to new contemporary artists.”
The museum’s glass studio plays an important role in the future development of Glas. It is the centre of a present and sensual communication that also includes the heat from the furnaces, the smell of burnt wood and the sound of the tools. And this is often where the fascination with the material begins.
The new logo reflects the sensuality of the glass in the ‘a’, which is soft and ‘liquid’ like hot glass. And the optical qualities of the glass appear like a lens that gives a view into the world of glass, on the new website, which launches at the same time as the new name.
Visitors will also experience changes in the physical layout of the museum, which has a revamped reception area and new shop.
The museum’s new visual identity and website have been developed in collaboration with the design and branding agency Stupid Studio.
The ‘Evolutions’ exhibition by Studio ThinkingHand opens on 29 April 2023 and runs until 7 January 2024.
The rebranding is supported by Syddjurs Municipality, The Beckett Foundation, The New Carlsberg Foundation Dinesen, Kvadrat, plus VisitAarhus/The Business Promotion Board.
The Obelske Family Fund supports the museum’s 2023 exhibition programme.
London Craft Week runs from 8-14 May 2023. The annual event celebrates outstanding British and international creativity, bringing together over 750 established and emerging makers, designers, brands and galleries from around the world.
Among those taking part are several glass artists, including glassblowers, engravers and casters. Find out about their exhibitions and workshops via this link.
Glassblower Michèle Oberdieck will be showing with Contemporary Applied Arts (CAA), as part of ‘Seven: Seven Decades, Seven Makers, Seven Disciplines’. This week-long exhibition showcases one maker for each applied arts discipline of ceramics, wood, glass, jewellery, metal, paper and textiles.
Meanwhile glassworker Trine Drivsholm will be exhibiting with Flow Gallery as part of ‘Constructing Space: An exhibition of Danish contemporary craft’.
Handblown glass firm Molten 1090 will present a demonstration at their studio, reflecting on their circular design ethos, followed by an informal Q&A. Their East London studio will be open for the whole of London Craft Week.
Glass sculptures are one facet of the work of Kira Phoenix K’inan. She will be taking part in ‘Future Icons Selects’, which presents over 70 leading makers from across Europe in a curated, industrial setting at Oxo Tower Wharf’s Bargehouse. Another artist showing in this exhibition is London-based glass artist Kate Maestri. She works to commission on large-scale architectural glass installations and small-scale glass wall sculptures for interiors. Jennifer Hackett, known as Glass By Butler, makes sculptural glasswork. See her pieces in ‘Future Icons Selects’.
For those interested in a creative glass workshop during London Craft Week, Maria Zulueta, senior lecturer at Morley College London, is offering different classes at the North Kensington Centre. Find out more and book here.
Aside from glass, there is a wealth of events and exhibitions, featuring all types of craftsmanship, to enjoy across the city. Find out more about London Craft Week 2023 here.
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES. WE’LL KEEP YOU ADVISED OF FURTHER CGS DISCOVERY DAYS SOON.
The second in the Contemporary Glass Society’s (CGS) series of glass Discovery Days around the country is taking place at the National Glass Centre in Sunderland on 20 May 2023. These special days are open to all – book by 30 April for a reduced ticket price!
Participants will be able to explore the University’s Art Department and workshops at the National Glass Centre, as well as seeing live demonstrations of glass making.
The programme for the day includes four fascinating speakers. These are: Sue Woolhouse, a long-established community artist who also works on individual artwork in a range of glass techniques; Effie Burns, famous for her cast miniature sculptures, who also works in the public sphere, plus Chris Day, a hot glass artist who gives a voice to Black history and challenges preconceptions through his work. In addition, Galia Amsel will bring an international flavour, joining the meeting via Zoom from New Zealand. She is a glass artist who manipulates hot glass with casting, grinding, texturing and polishing.
Participants will be able to explore contemporary glass and meet glass artists talking about their work and life as contemporary glass artists. Interact with professional creatives based locally and to find out more about working within the creative industries.
Glass artists attending can take part in a ‘Show and Tell’, which involves bringing along a piece of work and explaining the techniques and ideas behind it.
The day is organised by the CGS and sponsored by the Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers’ Charity Fund, the Glass Manufacturers’ Educational Trust and Kilncare.
Ticket prices:
EARLY BIRD rate until 30 April 2023: £33 + booking fee Standard Price from 1 May 2023: £45 + booking fee
Tickets include all the day’s events, refreshments and lunch.
Find out more details about the agenda and buy tickets via this link.
Image: Meet the makers, hear talks and see demonstrations of glassblowing at the National Glass Centre on 20 May 2023.
From 6 May until 8 October 2023, visitors to Germany’s Glasmuseum Lette can see the ‘To be on fire’ exhibition of lampworked glass.
This is the organisers’ third exhibition of lampworking, highlighting the exciting world of lampworked glass from across Europe.
Lampworking is a very old technique, which began to flourish in the sixteenth century, spreading to other countries from Venice in Italy. France, the Netherlands and Germany also became key locations. Today, as in the past, the German centre of lamp-blown glass is the Thuringian Forest, specifically the town of Lauscha.
For a long time, lampworked glass was considered the art of small objects, such as beads, miniatures, ornaments and small vessels. However, since the early 1990s, the technique has been adopted by a new generation of artists. Their enthusiasm for lamp glass is evident in the creative ideas they conceive and the objects they produce. With free, sculptural and sometimes large-format pieces, they are revolutionising lamp glass, opening up new possibilities for modern art.
Nine artists from different European countries have been invited to present their work in the ‘To be on fire’ exhibition. They all share a common technique, yet the world in which each one works tells its own story. The featured artists are: Falk Bauer, André and Rebekka Gutgesell, Krista Israel, James Lethbridge, Susan Liebold, JanHein van Stiphout, Christine Vanoppen and Nataliya Vladychko.
There will also be the opportunity to see work by artists from Glasmuseum Lette’s own collection.
Glasmuseum Lette is at Letter Berg 38, 48653 Coesfeld-Lette, Germany. Website: www.glasmuseum-lette.de
Opening hours: Wednesdays and Saturdays 2-5pm, Sundays 11am-5pm.
Image: Falk Bauer’s ‘Regenbogen-Skarabäus’ (2022). Photo by the artist
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