The CGS is working with The Design Trust to offer a new course on Social Media for absolute beginners, with a 50% discount on the course fee for CGS members. (If you are not yet a member you can join up now).
So, if you want to learn more about how to use Facebook or Instagram, get more followers on Pinterest or dabble with TikTok, then this online course will help you to get started.
The sessions are run by Patricia van den Akker, the Director of The Design Trust and an award-winning creative business adviser, and her colleague Anne-Marie Shepherd. Anne-Marie is responsible for social media at The Design Trust and was the Marketing & Social Media Manager for Made, London’s contemporary craft fair.
The course comprises a series of four online sessions on Fridays 12th, 19th, 26th February and 5th March, each from 10am – 12.30pm (UK time). If you are unable to join these sessions live, they will be recorded and posted in a private hub that you can access until September 2021, enabling you to take the course at your own pace.
The sessions promise to be super practical, with clear, step-by-step instructions on how to get started, plus how to get followers and engagement (often more important!). It will also cover how to use these social media tools to increase your profile and credibility, plus drive traffic to your website to get more online sales and commissions.
As a CGS member you’ll get 50% off the regular price of this course, and only pay £75.00 (incl. VAT) – rather than £149.00 – for the entire course.
A tribute to the life and work of this influential architectural glass sculptor, by Keith Cummings.
The sad news of the death of the sculptor and teacher Harry Seager represents a great loss to all who knew him. He was an original, influential sculptor, teacher and mentor and, over an active working life of over 50 years, he touched many lives.
Although he used glass as a sculptural material in his glass and steel constructions some time before the studio glass movement was established, he provided an enduring example and benchmark for the generations of students who graduated from the glass courses which proliferated in his wake.
His pieces managed to be both monumental and playful at the same time. The sinuous, linear steel structures supported and shaped the precisely-cut glass sheets into rhythmic forms that belied their enormous weight and the great engineering expertise that went into them.
Born in Birmingham in 1931, Harry was initially drawn to science, but settled on art, and attended Birmingham School of Art to study sculpture. After college, and two years’ National Service, he began producing site-specific works for buildings in a variety of materials.
He became a lecturer at Stourbridge College of Art in 1961, teaching the new Fine Art course, and offering the new Diploma in Art and Design in 1967.
Harry started experimenting with sheet glass as a material in the early 1960s, drawing on the examples set by the Russian constructivists. Initially he used resins to bond sheets together, but graduated to complex steel armatures, which enabled works to be re-assembled and repaired.
He was represented by the Gimpel Fils gallery between the 1960s and the 1980s, which brought his work to an international audience, and much acclaim. He is also represented in many public and private collections, including the Victoria and Albert museum.
In his later years, he used glass more sparingly, working in a wide variety of materials and scales. He never lost his enthusiasm and love of life and people, which made him a delightful person to know.
He was busy in his studio to the end, leaving ambitious pieces unfinished when he was cut down by this cruel virus.
He loved his home and family and was married to his wife Marie for 58 years. He leaves her, their daughter Rebecca, and two grandchildren, Misty and Alice. Their beloved son Rueben pre-deceased him. He will be sorely missed by all who knew him.
By Keith Cummings
Photo: Harry Seager with one of his iconic layered glass sculptures, photographed by Lily Olley.
Six art works exploring new ways of engaging with the materiality of glass in the digital era have been commissioned as part of the ‘Glass, Meet the Future’ (GMTF) film festival 2021.
The seven artists awarded are Alison Lowry and Jayne Cherry (Northern Ireland), Flora de Bechi (Scotland), Griet Beyaert (England), Juli Bolaños-Durman (Scotland/Costa Rica), Madeline Rile Smith (USA) and Simone Fezer (Germany).
Their contributions will form part of the core GMTF schedule alongside new film entries, a publication and podcast.
Unique in approach, each project has been selected for its resonance with core human emotions and the intangible relationship with the material of glass and film.
Alison Lowry and Jayne Cherry’s work will reflect on the numerous State- and religious-run institutions that operated in Ireland between the 18th and late 20th centuries, incarcerating mothers and their children. Their collaborative, site-responsive work will be a visceral experience, using a glasswork as the investment object to provide a cognitive dissonance for the viewer.
Flora de Bechi’s work, entitled ‘Glass into the mould, light into the camera, body into space’ is rooted in research and experiences gathered whilst on residency at North Lands Creative in 2019. The film features a poetic imagining of the hollow space of the Grey Cairns of Camster as both a camera and mould. A digital artist’s book will accompany the work.
Griet Beyaert’s ‘Remote Glass Sound Workshop’ will explore the question, ‘What do you hear when you think about the future?’ This will later be realised as a short film and glass sound piece using the collaborative soundbite submissions of participants.
Juli Bolaños-Durman will explore how the visceral bond between the maker, community and material permeates the creative process, guiding it to become something raw and precious at the same time. Juli is interested to explore human curiosity and the instinctual need to play and create.
A performance-based work by Madeline Rile Smith will highlight communal acts of creation and collective action involving hot glass and textile-inspired processes. This unspoken film will document a story of social currency, communal effort, and interpersonal connection in the glass studio.
The performance work will form a narrative exploring The universal existence of structures and the interaction of human beings with them, their similarities and differences, and the connectedness of everything, will be the narrative behind a performance work of Simone Fezer. It will focus on restriction, adaptation, reflection, perspectives, and the complex layering of reality.
Speaking about the artists’ work selected for GMTF 2021, Karen Phillips, Director of North Lands Creative, said, “The festival commissions feel genuinely human, different and empathetic. It’s this fighting spirit and determination from the artists to gain back some cohesion that we can all resonate with right now.
“We are following what is happening all over the world related to Covid-19 and the impact it has on artists, the arts, the cultural landscape and to life globally. With physical mobility still on pause, in response we see proposals for solidarity arising. The six key commissions chosen have deep-reaching, hard-hitting, topical themes at the heart of their projects, and a COVID-19-adjacent element.
“Proving that out of adversity comes creativity, Glass, Meet the Future 2021, hopes to invite dialogue, prompt questions, and drive analysis and contemplation of life and the world as we know it, the artists commissions will be particularly interesting in the festival’s second year given the unique challenges and limitations faced by all.
“We are delighted that we could provide artists with the opportunity to produce new work covering a range of geographical areas, approaches and audiences.”
Supported through British Council Scotland and Creative Scotland as part of the UK in Japan and working alongside North Lands Creative, GMTF 2021 will deliver a programme of physical and online events taking place internationally throughout the year. Project partners are the Toyama Institute of Glass Art with Toyama Glass Art Museum in Japan and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York.
Alongside the new commissioned work, GMTF 2021 will showcase a cross section of international diverse short films using glass as the predominant feature.
The Glass, Meet the Future Festival 2021 takes place from 20 March-4 April 2021, and continues in Japan in October 2021.
Leading glass artist and educator, Keith Cummings, pays tribute to one of the great innovators of the contemporary glass world.
Sam Herman, one of the major pioneers of the British Studio Glass movement, sadly died on 29 November 2020. As a maker, teacher and powerful apostle of hot glass forming, his influence on the development of the British Studio glass movement has been long lasting and truly revolutionary.
As one of the original students of Harvey Littleton’s glass course at the University of Madison-Wisconsin in the early 1960’s, he experienced first-hand the development of the small furnace at Wisconsin by Harvey Littleton and Dominic Labino. This allowed art students to actively shape the glass themselves, and to use glass as a genuinely creative studio material for the first time. It also placed glass in American colleges as a Fine Art material.
There were only a few courses in glass design at British art schools at this time, all of which saw glass as part of a strict design process in which students’ designs were realised by skilled, industrially trained craftsmen.
When Sam Herman came to Britain in 1966 (after graduating with a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture and Glass), bringing with him an exhibition of glass work by Wisconsin students, his impact during visits to Edinburgh, Stourbridge, and the Royal College of Art demonstrated both a new way of making and a new way of seeing glass as a vehicle for creative education. His personal example, and his refreshingly direct way of talking about his work, set in motion the entire first wave of British studio glass makers, including Pauline Solven, Karlin Rushbrooke, and George Elliott.
He was invited to teach at the Royal College of Art, becoming head of the glass department from 1967 to 1974, during which time he led the first group of students who were able to work hot glass from the new, Wisconsin-style furnaces.
In 1969 he helped to establish the Glasshouse in London which provided glass studios for rent, and also as an outlet for their work. His joint exhibition in 1971, with the jeweller Gerda Flöckinger in the Victoria and Albert Museum, further established his growing global reputation and signalled that studio glass in Britain had come of age.
He worked and exhibited across the world during his long, rich and productive life and career.
He was always unmistakably American in his strong, direct approach to teaching and making; he never stopped experimenting and encouraged his students to do the same. He nevertheless chose to settle in Britain, and remained a lifelong presence.
The recent book about him, edited by Rollo Campbell, with a foreward by the Marquess of Queensberry, is a fitting testament to his life and work.
By Keith Cummings
Feature image: Sam Herman, Free Blown Bottle (1971). 260mm high x 180mm wide. From Dan Klein & Alan J Poole’s collection, now at the National Museums of Scotland.
Art, craft and design exhibition organisers are finding new ways to overcome the limitations imposed by lockdowns and tier restrictions to bring art and design to buyers.
One solution is the Crafting a Difference show, taking place from 20 January until 2 April 2021, which is a physical exhibition that offers the option to view the gallery virtually from your computer.
Curated by Brian Kennedy, Crafting a Difference features five prestigious galleries showcasing over 200 works by 70 artists, displayed across five floors of SoShiro’s flagship London atelier, housed in a magnificent Marylebone townhouse.
Among those exhibiting is London’s Vessel Gallery, which is displaying work by a variety of top glass artists, including Baldwin & Guggisberg, Bethany Wood, Chris Day, Claire Malet, Enemark & Thompson, Fredrik Nielsen, James Lethbridge, Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert, Jo Taylor, Laura Hart, Liam Reeves, Maarten Vrolijk, Morten Klitgaard, Nina Casson McGarva and Vanessa Hogge.
Also featuring glass artists are the Ting Ying gallery, with collaborative work by Vezzini & Chen, plus pieces by Zhao Jinya, as well as the MADEINBRITALY gallery, which has mixed media work including glass by Rosa Nguyen.
The event has been orchestrated to coincide with the virtual fairs The London Art Fair and Collect 2021.
The SoShiro space, at 23 Welbeck Street, London W1G 8DZ, offers a mix of gallery-style rooms but also shows works placed within a home environment.
The exhibition is not only available to view online but has been filmed for viewing, offering a virtual, interactive tour as well. The hope is that, if restrictions are relaxed, the event will be able to open its doors for ‘exclusive by appointment’ in-person visits before it closes on 2 April.
View all works for sale and full exhibition catalogue
The 2021 edition of the Crafts Council’s Collect art fair for contemporary craft and design will take place online this year.
Collect takes place from 26 February until 2 March 2021, with the Crafts Council providing a range of free digital and virtual events, talks and tours from leading gallerists, artists, and figures from art, fashion and culture on its own channels, alongside 30 top galleries from around the world showing and selling their collections from online ‘booths’ hosted by Artsy.net (until 26 March).
Collect was established in 2004 by the Crafts Council and has built a reputation as one of the world’s leading events for contemporary craft and design.
It brings together international galleries to showcase and sell work by living contemporary craft artists. Much of the work is made especially for the fair and is bought for private and public collections around the world.
Some of the leading names in contemporary glass that will be exhibiting include Joanna Bird Contemporary Collections, London Glassblowing, Vessel Gallery, Gallery TEN and J Lohmann Gallery.
The 30 galleries taking part are from the US, Thailand, France, Hong Kong, The Netherlands, South Korea, Norway, China, Germany and the UK.
Five members of the Contemporary Glass Society (CGS) were awarded prizes at China’s 5th Hejian Glass Art Competition.
Members Calum Dawes, Stewart Hearn, Ana Laura Quintana, Sogon Kim and Han De Kluijver all received a Selected Work Certification Award.
The Gold Medal award of a car went to a postgraduate student from Jilin Art College. Two Silver Medal Award trophies were won by Mark Hursty and Lozano Alexander Escamilla, with Alise Stopina taking the Bronze Medal Award. Theo Brooks won the Good Work Award for two pieces.
Silver Medal Award trophy winners were Mark Hursty (above image) and Lozano Alexander Escamilla (main feature image).Maria Koshenkova was among several entrants who won a Selected work Certification Award.
Other winners of the Selected work Certification Award were Yoshico Okada, Maria Koshenkova, Dina Priess, Charlie Murphy, Mathilde Caylou, Georgina Agius, Demetra Theofanous, Tim Jago Morris, Pauline Marmilloud, Jessamy Kelly and James Witchell.
Alise Stopina won the Bronze Medal award.
Commenting on the competition and exhibition, the Secretary of the Hejian municipal Party committee, Mr Weijiang Yin, said, “Hejian’s glass industry has gone abroad and entered the world. Its products have successively won the Gold Award of China Light Industry Exhibition, Gold Award of Hong Kong International Cultural and Creative Industry Expo, the best design award at the Beijing International Tourism Expo and the German Red Dot Award (China good Design Award).
Mr Weijiang Yin speaking at the event.
“Hejian has become the capital of China’s technological glass and the production base of China’s heat-resistant glass. The five consecutive China Hejian technological glass design innovation competitions and the four China Hejian International Lighting glass art festivals have well promoted the exchange of international lighting technology and personnel training, and let the traditional lighting technology pass down and carry forward.
“Thank you very much to CGS and congratulations to all the artists awarded.”
Today, it is possible to 3D print everything from body parts to houses. But 3D printing of glass faces challenges, not least because of the high temperatures required to keep it fluid while the shape is extruded. Glass Network digital’s editor, Linda Banks, examines the progress that has been made in glass 3D printing in recent years.
In 2015 an Israeli startup, Micron3DP, was one of the first to successfully 3D print with glass in a hot liquid form. The company stated that it had managed to “print ‘soft’ glass at a temperature of 850 degrees, as well as borosilicate glass at a melting temperature of 1640 degrees Celsius”. It used “an extremely hot extruder” for the task.
Micron3DP was able to create accurate and unusual shapes with its extrusion process, which even led to a collaboration with Swarovski to 3D print its crystal glass. Swarovski were sponsors of the 2017 Designers of the Future awards and one of the winners, TAKT Project, used Micron3DP’s printing process to create a Printed Crystal series of candleholders and vases. The pieces, which were inspired by frost crystals, had fine, gently ribbed textures and a thickness of just 1.5mm. They were shown at the Design Miami/Basel exhibition 2017. See images of the vases in this article by Dezeen.
However, by 2018, Micron3DP had decided to shift its focus away from 3D printing of glass. In an interview with 3D Printing Media Network, the company’s CTO Eran Galor noted that the main challenge was to educate the market. He likened the problem to that faced by the development of fibreoptics in the 1980s, when “nobody knew what it would be useful for because the internet had not been invented yet”. In the case of 3D glass printing, he said, “We cannot clearly pinpoint the market yet, but it could become a huge opportunity.” He explained that engineers needed to understand how to design for 3D printing, which offered the opportunity to create a huge variety of unique shapes. He cited the company’s work with the University of Helsinki in Finland, during which they collaborated on the design of a complex microfluidic tool that they were able to print in less than 10 minutes.
While Micron3DP clearly believes there is potential for its glass printing technology, particularly for applications in the pharmaceutical industry, its commercialisation has been shelved for the time being.
Meanwhile, academia was also developing its own 3D print solution for glass. Teams from the US-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Mediated Matter group, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Glass Lab showed off G3DP, their own additive manufacturing process for 3D printing optically transparent glass, in 2017.
This featured a high-heat extrusion printer, fitted with two heated chambers. One contained the molten glass, and a ceramic print nozzle extruded the molten soda-lime glass into the second, annealing, chamber at a temperature of around 1000 degrees C. The second chamber was maintained at around 500 degrees C, just above the annealing temperature of the glass, until the printing of the design was complete. Then the chamber was cooled gradually.
The MIT team has since continued to refine its technology, with its G3DP2 platform combining a digitally integrated three-zone thermal control system with four-axis motion control.
In order to test its capabilities, a set of 3m-tall glass columns was created and shown at Milan Design Week in 2017. In the abstract for the article, ‘Additive Manufacturing of Transparent Glass Structures’, the authors stated that the project highlighted “the geometric complexity, accuracy, strength and transparency of 3D-printed glass at an architectural scale for the first time, and a critical step in utilizing the true structural capacity of the material”. Watch the printer in action and the creation of the beautiful glass towers in the video GLASS II via this link .
On a smaller scale, Australia-based Maple Glass Printing has been experimenting in the 3D glass printing field since 2017. The company’s CEO, Darren Feenstra, and CTO, Nick Birbilis, believed there was a gap in the market for a more affordable glass printer that would have a wide range of commercial applications. They decided to retrofit a polymer 3D printer to see if it could do the job.
It took two years of work and experimentation to create the preliminary prototype. They applied for a patent and received grant funding to commercialise their 3D printer towards the end of 2020.
According to Tony Koutsonikolas, Maple Glass’ Head of R&D, two important benefits of this printer are that it is able to use 100% recycled glass and that its processes are less energy intensive. The glass is only heated for a few minutes at high temperature to soften it. This means that the printer could help in the push to create a more sustainable society, as the company’s central mission is to reduce glass waste by 3D printing it for a second life. He points out that Australia alone uses 1.3 million tonnes of glass each year.
The team has focused on experimenting with recycled bottle glass, as one of the goals is to reduce the amount of such glass being sent to landfill. The problem has been that different types of glass melt at different temperatures, which means all the types have to be sorted, and they are difficult to reuse. Existing recycling processes currently require clean glass to be mixed with the bottle glass and energy usage is high. Maple Glass see their printer as a possible solution – a tool to process this ‘waste’ mixed glass, make new products and reduce the burden on the environment.
Currently the extruded glass layer height used by the printer is 1mm, but the plan is to reduce this in due course. This would enable the production of pieces with flatter surfaces. They could also be further smoothed, polished or drilled with a diamond-tipped tool once cooled.
Objects created so far have been a maximum of 150mm in height, but the hope is that the commercial version could create items even larger and in a range of colours.
As with other 3D printing technologies, printing time varies significantly depending on the size, shape and complexity of the item. A small perfume bottle, for example, may take one and a half hours to print, Tony explains.
Subtle details can be 3D printed in glass from design software. Photo: Tony Koutsonikolas.
He suggests another application for the 3D printer is as an enabling technology, offering a way for artists to create designs digitally and iterate versions easily. The company is open to discussions about innovative ways in which the printer could be used, so if you have an idea, look at their website and get in touch.
Tony is pleased to announce that the commercial version of their 3D printer for glass will be launched this month (January 2021) and you can read more about its technical specifications and possible applications here.
Perhaps the world is now ready to embrace the potential of 3D glass printing.
Main feature image: Glass 3D printing capabilities. Photos: Tony Koutsonikolas.
Through these difficult times, our minds sometimes wander to happy days, holidays, gatherings, or just places we love to visit. As we are back in lockdown, the Contemporary Glass Society (CGS) is inviting members to use this time to create and show something wonderful that reflects future travels to places near and far, or visits to family and friends.
In this selling online exhibition, inspired by glass collector and enthusiast Alan J Poole, CGS invites members to make a small piece (or to submit one you have already), with a view or reference to somewhere that means something to you. The piece should be a maximum size of 15 x 15cm.
Your postcard should ideally be made from glass. However, we understand that for some of you access to your studio and materials may be impossible. If that is the case, please take this as a chance to create something out of any materials available to you!
All pieces of work will be for sale at £50, £100 or £150.
This will be an online show, so remember that good photographs are vital.
Deadline for submissions is Monday 8 February 2021.
This year’s winner of the CGS Amanda Moriarty Prize, Calum Dawes, says the award will enable him to extend the work he has been developing on his own during lockdown, as he has found it challenging to fit his three-stage process around busy workshop schedules.
Adelighted Calum explained, “I’m really grateful for this opportunity … Hopefully, I can produce something really exciting with the support of CGS and Devereux & Huskie. Can’t think of a better way to start 2021!”
He intends to submit the resulting new glass artwork for The Cheongju International Craft Biennal, 2021 or, if that is not feasible because of scheduling or Covid restrictions, for the British Glass Biennale in 2022.
Calum graduated from the University of Sunderland in 2019 with a BA Glass & Ceramics. In the same year, he won the Glass Sellers Art & Craft Student Award and was placed third in the Contemporary Glass Society 2019 Glass Prize.
This year, Wiltshire-based Devereux & Huskie Glassworks is providing the prize of a four-day residency in the studio. James Devereux and Katherine Huskie, both accomplished glass artists in their own right, are experienced in facilitating the creative ideas of designers and glass makers.
Reptile Daydream by Calum Dawes. Photo: Jo Howell.
In his application, Calum explained about his latest pieces: “This work is a continuing development of my love of illustration and glass as a sculptural material. The form and optical qualities of the glass interact with the illustrations in ways other materials don’t, while the imagery lends the piece narrative and context.
“It is a body of work I have been developing on my own time, but I have hit a wall, due to making them on my own and having to try to fit within the busy workshop schedule. These pieces are a three-stage process: first the bowls are blown, then they are painted with high-fire vitreous enamels, after which they are picked up in the hot shop. The painting is fired on and then each bowl is stuffed with a mass of molten glass in order to fill it. Finally, sculptural elements are added right before the piece is put away.
“Initially they were designed in this manner for me to be able to produce under current limitations and I have made several of these pieces. However, I have found I have reached a limit in size and complexity, partly due to the workshop schedule (inadequate time to anneal a thicker piece) and partly due to not having much access to assistance.
“During this residency I would hope to use Katie and James’ extensive wealth of knowledge and experience to help troubleshoot issues in the making of this work on a larger scale, as well as their practical and technical skills to improve my own making of these pieces in the future. I would like to gaff the pieces, to push myself and my glass making skills, using this opportunity to develop new skills.”
The annual Amanda Moriarty Prize is designed to enable one CGS member to achieve something unique, fulfilling their creative ambition or adding to their technical skill set. It was launched in memory of Amanda Moriarty, a long-serving Board member and Honorary Treasurer, who sadly passed away in 2017. It celebrates her passion for, and encouragement of, glass making.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
Stourbridge College 1965?
