In this time line I pull quotes to illustrate a thread in popular and scholarly writing and criticism about glass. Here we will see current glass artists defending their art against the accusations and separating themselves from these stereotypes and, hopefully, find out how and where the now-common opinion was born. Fundamentally, the general thesis seems to be born of the question, What Is Art? This question I will leave to others to answer, here I am only documenting the written history of a popular way of thinking and a popular taste. The year 2007 is in two parts, this is the second.
2007 Robin Rice:
"Sarah Gilbert, a Spring 2007 Resident Fellow of the Creative Glass Center of America, makes blown tableware and other functional projects which have been modified to reproduce isolated parts of her own body and in some cases those of others.
Gilbert’s gloss on these projects is sophisticated. She characterizes her work as an inquiry into values and co-modification in contemporary society. Each piece or project is designed to carry out a conceptual mission that reflects her study of political science, anthropology, object history, and Marxist, semiotic and other current theoretical areas at
For a critique of contemporary industrial design, Wineglasses: Crate and Barrel, 4/10/06, she made a near-perfect copy of a Crate and Barrel wineglass, altering the design only to impress the texture of her own lips onto the lip of the glass and place the shapes of her own toes onto its foot. These patterns were cast from life and are therefore life scale.
There’s a curious disjuncture between the lip impressions, which are the scale and location of actual lips drinking from the glass, and the foot impressions, really a relief of toes, which is based on a verbal equivalency between the foot of a person and the foot of a glass, not a physical one. In the ordinary course of events, including the champagne sipped from the beloved’s shoe or the breaking of the wineglass at the conclusion of a Jewish wedding, bare toes rarely touch a wineglass.
When Gilbert added an appropriated barcode label to her glass, the copy was virtually indistinguishable from the original. Photographs Gilbert took of her glass with its siblings in a Crate and Barrel store document the climactic event of the project.
“[Industrial] design today seems to be about what you can make very quickly,” Gilbert notes. For the opening reception of an exhibition of her own work, she elaborated the Crate and Barrel project with Cheers, 11/30/06, 120 perfect mold-blown glass copies of the ubiquitous plastic wineglass found at gallery openings and other semi-public functions. Visitors were allowed to take one of Gilbert’s glasses home and did so with pleasure, something that would not have happened with plastic. Gilbert inverted the process by which a plastic vessel was created in imitation of a glass one and by so doing offered “new ways of experiencing the world, perhaps by creating sensations that aren’t already completely co-modified.”
For herself, Gilbert prefers objects that have personal associations, things made by her or gifts made by friends. She says, “I don’t really like stuff; I live mattress on floor and one little desk.”
At CGCA, Gilbert blew a large number of identical wineglasses for a future social occasion. Like the Crate and Barrel glass, all are impressed with a part of the body cast from life, in this case, Gilbert’s own bellybutton becomes a dimple in what is sometimes called the “belly” of the glass.
The glass bellybuttons are “pristine and pure” in contrast to those of flesh, a contrast which amuses the artist. Gilbert hopes to incorporate casts of other bodily orifices in future work and also perhaps to cast her own breast as the basis of a tazza, reprising in real life legends of coupes molded from the perfect breasts of the likes of Marie Antoinette, Helen of Troy and other notorious beauties.
Gilbert’s completed projects usually encompass an event and a context in addition to specific objects. At the Rhode Island School of Design, where she earned a BFA, she invited twelve guests for dessert and wine, and sent each a kit with which to cast parts of their bodies. She made a set of tableware for the party incorporating casts from each guest. One person’s bellybutton was in the bottom of the bowls. One person’s skin texture on a metal fork and so on. “As the guests ate and drank and conversed with each other, the objects around the table revealed their corporal characters.”
This project illustrates the feminist bias which permeates Gilbert’s work. It has to do with the presentation of food and drink, typically a woman’s task, and one in which Gilbert casts herself as hostess, cook (or provider of prepared food), and maid. A parallel of this work to Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party is obvious, though Gilbert alters contemporary-cum-traditional dinnerware and eschews
Rice, Robin. "Sarah Gilbert" Wheaton Arts. 2007. Creative Glass Center of America. website Accessed May 2, 2009. http://www.wheatonarts.org/creativeglasscenteramerica/criticresidency/robinrice/Gilbertsarahessay
2007 ArtKnowledgeNews.com:
"LONDON - ZeST Gallery, London’s top destination for contemporary glass art, is showcasing new work by celebrated British glass artist Adam Aaronson. The pieces in this solo show illustrate Adam’s versatility as an artist and technical skill as a maker through his new body of work entitled ‘Slices’. On exhibition 25 Octiber until 25 November.
Adam Aaronson has been at the heart of British studio glass for more than 25 years, first as a gallery owner discovering and promoting new glass talent and subsequently as an artist in his own right. Adam opened his first glassblowing studio in 1986, which marked the beginning of his personal journey as a glass artist, as well as offering both British and international artists the chance to develop their own work through residencies in his studio.
Twenty years later, Adam’s work has developed and matured, and he is now exploring ‘Slices’ as a body of work, which is being shown at ZeST Contemporary Glass Gallery for the first time.
“Even after more than 20 years, I am still captivated by the fluidity and movement of a mass of molten glass. Seeing the glass hot on the end of a blowing iron almost has a life of its own, floating, ever changing, a life that requires nurturing and taming. The transition from this amorphous state to the final static form never fails to fascinate me. I always try to create a feeling of continual movement and to embody in the finished piece some of the qualities that are inherent in the beauty of the process.”....Adam Aaronson
Adam’s work has been exhibited all over the world and can be found in numerous private collections from royalty to rock stars. Major commissions include the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Italy’s venerable Salviati glass studio, and the UK’s National Art Collections Fund. His work has been selected for the prestigious Sotheby’s Contemporary Decorative Arts exhibition in London, and more recently, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Visitors are also able to tour the adjacent glass studio, where Adam makes his critically acclaimed work, and will enjoy a fascinating insight into the skilled process of glass making. Entrance is free and all designs are available to buy from ZeST Gallery. For more than 25 years, aside from making his own glass, Adam Aaronson has been discovering and promoting emerging artists, including many who are now established glass artists, such as Tessa Clegg, Anna Dickinson and many others. He has always offered residencies and internships to both British and international artists and continues to support new glass talent by working collaboratively with artists, encouraging their use of hot glass in his studio.
ZeST Gallery is open: Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm - Visit www.zestgallery.com"
ArtKnowledgeNews.com. Author/Editor unknown. October 10, 2007. website accessed May 10, 2009. http://artknowledgenews.com/Adam_Aaronson.html
2007 Alan Artner:
"Glass sculpture seldom gets more seductive than the work of Lino Tagliapietra, the 73-year-old master from Murano who has a large exhibition of pieces completed mainly since 2000 at the Marx-Saunders Gallery.
Vessels, abstract screens and representational pieces both free-standing and hanging -- all are here, making up a prodigious display of craft by which the artist measures himself against a centuries-old Venetian glassblowing tradition.
The work represents in color, form and surface some of the most extravagant decorative art created today, which draws from many cultures and epochs. It has echoes of J.M.Whistler's "Peacock Room," the Byzantine mosaics of Ravenna, gold paintings by Gustav Klimt and shields of Masai warriors. What's more, everything coexists comfortably, as if in Charles Baudelaire's 19th Century dream of luxury, calm and voluptuousness.
Many might say that because such opulence does not express our period, Tagliapietra's art is only backward-looking. It certainly is a sybaritic indulgence from which hard-core modernists would recoil. But we are in the most artistically conservative era of the last half century, and if painters can look back while indulging the delusion that their "concepts" will make the past fresh, so can creators of glass sculpture.
The works Tagliapietra calls "dinosaurs" are among the most personal in form and lyrical in expression. Their sole purpose is to win us over, and that they instantly do. Today's viewers are supposed to hate the ease of that process, preferring to be affronted by art that demands they sacrifice optical gratification. Hence, work like this that makes an appeal to pleasure is tacitly dismissed by thinkers who see it to be of interest only to the rich and brainless.
You know who you are. "
Artner, A. "Pretty glass sculpture may confuse some". Chicago News Tribune. August 31, 2007.
2007 Dominic Lutyens:
"The glamour garnered over years, and in some cases centuries, by Europe’s most important glass and crystalware companies can be a double-edged sword.
France’s Baccarat, Daum and Lalique and, to a lesser extent, Finland’s Iittala and Orrefors, Italy’s Salviati and Venini and Ireland’s Waterford, all boast a prestigious heritage and impressive longevity. Baccarat was founded in 1764, Daum in 1875, Lalique in 1886 (though it started as a jeweller), Iittala in 1881, Orrefors in 1898, Salviati in 1859, Venini in 1921 and Waterford in 1783. Each has a distinct aesthetic, ranging from elaborate French art nouveau to clean-lined Finnish modernism to Italian avant-garde to British ornamentation. And their expensive pieces grace sideboards and dining tables in homes around the world.
Yet, as with many hallowed historic brands, these companies are constantly battling to stay relevant in the minds’ of modern-day homeowners.
“All are in very different categories and have different constituencies but, as with all luxury products, there’s a complex line to negotiate to ensure that tradition and heritage, seen as positive attributes, don’t suddenly appear hopelessly old hat,” says Deyan Sudjic, director of London’s Design Museum. “To stay the same [in terms of status] such companies need always to be changing. It’s like revitalising a famous old restaurant. You need to cater for the people who come back maybe once a year, or even once every 10 years, but also to handle the people who want something every week.”
Simon Andrews, director of 20th-century decorative arts at Christie’s auction house, agrees. “Often their names are too associated with the past. If they are to appeal to a modern consumer market, [they] need to reinvent themselves while maintaining the same level of quality.”
The various groups are well aware of the challenges they face. But how to overcome them? The French companies, which have the biggest problem in this respect given their formal, highly wrought style and exceedingly high price points, offer the most useful case studies.
In the 1970s Baccarat’s answer was to commission pieces by surrealist Salvador Dalí and pop artist César. This century it moved to a new Paris headquarters, commissioned Philippe Starck to decorate the interiors (one feature is a chandelier submerged in a tank of water) and launched the designer’s highly contemporary Darkside collection, including the black Zénith crystal chandelier and, more recently, the Our Fire candleholder incorporating a smoky grey glass lampshade. This was actually delving into Baccarat history – the company brought out its first coal-black crystalware in 1844 – and the Starck range was an instant, widely followed hit.
Chantal Granier, the company’s artistic adviser, has since promoted the use of fibre optics and LEDs in Baccarat lighting and commissioned cutting-edge designers, such as Arik Levy and Jaime Hayon, to create new pieces. These include futuristic highball tumblers and ice buckets incised with abstract swirls and horizontal lines (from Levy) and items that combine glass with ceramics (from Hayon, who is also working with long-established porcelain brand Lladró).
Lalique has followed with its own Black collection, including a recasting of René Lalique’s 1927 Bacchantes vase, as well as the Neolalique and Bucolique collections which tweak and update other art deco and art nouveau designs.
Daum, which has also worked with Dalí and César in the past as well as sculptors Calude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne, is meanwhile attempting to capitalise on heightened interest in “design art”, with a set of new three-dimensional pâte de cristal renditions of 1961 gouaches by Georges Braque.
Karol Sales, buyer of international porcelain and crystal at London’s Harrods department store, regards the heritage crystal and glass makers as more forward-looking than, for example, “Limoges porcelain – brands such as Herend and Meissen – which are experiencing a slump”.
“In just one week in October we sold a [Lalique] Versailles vase for £3,759 and Martinets vase for £1,115. People criticise Lalique for looking to its past but it doesn’t just replicate old pieces from its archives; it often gives them a modern slant.” She points to the Champs Elysees bowl, designed in 1951, but now “injected with ultra-fashionable gold”.
The Black collection “helped change the perception of the brand and bring in new customers”, says Oliver Mauny, Lalique’s president. It even prompted Tom Ford, the fashion designer, to commission a deco-inspired black bottle for his scent, Black Orchid, from the company.
Exhibitions and auctions – and, in the case of Lalique and Baccarat, less expensive jewellery lines, which allow a wider public to buy into the brands – help keep these groups in the public eye. Liberty, the UK department store, held a Neolalique show this summer, while Baccarat hosted an event showcasing its glass-blowers’ skills at Harrods in September.
Sales figures appear to be healthy. Lalique will not divulge its turnover but Daum has seen a 25 per cent increase in the past two years, while Baccarat’s UK homeware business has more than tripled in the past five. Selfridges recently endorsed the heritage glass and crystal market by opening a department called Traditional Arts selling Daum and Lalique as well as Herend and Lladró.
Still, many observers think the companies could take more risks. “Lalique, Daum, Baccarat – all are trying to maintain a connection to the past – people who traditionally buy their products – while appealing to the present – attracting new clients – but without being too extreme,” says Fiona Baker at Christie’s, which sells historic pieces from each at auction. “They respond to trends rather than create them. Whether these current designs will be sold at Christie’s in 50 years, only time will tell.”
On one side of the glass and crystal market are the ultra-polished vases and bowls produced by big manufacturers. On the other are the free-form, sculptural pieces coming out of contemporary artist-designer studios and small factories.
Wisconsin-based Harvey Littleton and Dominic Labino are credited with having kick-started the “art glass” movement in the early 1960s, leading a bunch of itinerant hippy potters who began making pieces in a portable furnace transported by van, according to Dan Klein, one of the UK’s top glass experts. “I was amazed when I first saw studio glass in a New York gallery,” he recalls. “I thought glass came only in vessel or flat forms but this was wildly abstract and expressionist.”
Today, the category is moving from the margins to the mainstream, legitimised and promoted by the UK’s Jerwood Prize (awarded once every five years to a glass artist), an annual £20,000 Bombay Sapphire design competition, New York and Chicago’s SOFA (Sculptural Object, Functional Art) shows and the Victoria and Albert Museum’s contemporary glass gallery, which opened in 2004. The V&A also hosts an annual crafts-focused selling exhibition, Collect, with heavy emphasis on glass, and a few years ago, it mounted a crowd-pulling exhibition of the love-them-or-loathe-them confections of Seattle-based Dale Chihuly, one of the world’s most successful glass artists.
“Artists have experimented with glass as an artform for decades but over the past 10 years it has become more sculptural and diverse, with an increasing number of young glass artists on the scene,” says Christopher Maxwell, an assistant curator at the V&A.
“Glass used to be seen as a poor relation to other materials. Now it’s considered exciting,” Klein adds. “We’re seeing an emerging secondary market. It’s like photography, which went from being viewed as reportage to being deemed fine art. You only have to think of Cindy Sherman and Bill Viola.”
Laura Birdsall, who won Bombay Sapphire’s “best newcomer” award in 2006, agrees. “These events are creating a place for art glass that has nothing to do with bearded hippies throwing pots or hand-blowing glass.”
Adam Aaronson, founder of Zest, one of the UK’s leading glass galleries and an artist-designer himself, says the market can be divided into two categories – “art glass”, which “tends to refer to glass which, while relatively unique, is made in a factory” and “studio glass, made by one or at most two people who are totally hands-on.” He acknowledges there is “big crossover” between the two and says styles can be expressionist or conceptual.
Across the board, modern-day glass artists seem to prefer kiln-forming techniques (melting cold pieces of glass in a kiln, sometimes straight into a mould, in a technique called “slumping”) to the more expensive hot-work approach (in which glass is “gathered” with a rod from a furnace, then hand-blown). They are also embracing computer-aided design, water-jet-cutting and laser-cutting; blending glass with oxides to create pieces ambiguously resembling metal; and incorporating other materials, including wood, stone, gold leaf and mirrors, to create unconventional hybrid pieces.
The fraternity remains relatively small, with famous names including Colin Reid (ruggedly organic pieces resembling rocks), Bruno Romanelli (incorporating casts of body parts and so comparatively figurative), Neil Wilkin (inspired by plant forms) and Tessa Clegg, a 1998 Jerwood prize winner (elegantly streamlined sculptural pieces that allude teasingly to functional objects).
The market is also limited, with buyers concentrated in the US and the UK. British glass galleries include Zest, Barrett Marsden, Adrian Sassoon, Studio Glass and Cowdy; in the US, there is New York’s Heller, Ohio’s Thomas R. Riley, Michigan’s Habatat and Seattle’s Foster White.
The appeal of art glass is that “it’s like buying a painting”, Aaronson says. “When you do so, you’re buying a point in time in an artist’s development and also helping the artist to grow.”
At the same time, “glass is more affordable than art”, says Clare Beck at Adrian Sassoon. “A piece by an established glass artist costs much less than a painting by a fine artist of an equivalent status.”
Reid, Romanelli and Clegg’s pieces are, for example, priced from £3,000.
For buyers interested in function as well as form, there are the designers focused on more practical glass art. Sweden’s Lena Bergstrom, for example, creates clean-lined, gently curvaceous bowls, vases and glasses in shades such as grape and olive green, while the UK’s Rachael Woodman produces globular bowls and dishes sometimes adorned with gold leaf.
Slightly more unorthodox are the dishes made by Luana Adriani, which often bear sharp photographic images of women’s faces, cut out with a scalpel and sandblasted, and Birdsall’s bulbous hand-blown vessels, which are white on the outside with glowing, electric colours, such as cobalt blue or royal purple, inside. “I like building a bridge between this ancient medium and a modern, graphic style,” Adriani says.
Birdsall feels the same. The work “has elements of craft, art and sculpture and doesn’t neatly fit into any of these boxes.”"
Lutyens, D. "Always a glass act." November 24, 2007. Financial Times. website accessed June 8, 2009. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/bef63ea2-98ac-11dc-8ca7-0000779fd2ac.html
2007 National Endowment for the Arts:
"Pilchuck Glass School
Seattle, WA
$25,000
To support a summer artist residency program. Artists will be provided with resources, facilities, and technical assistance to experiment with new work in glass.
Pittsburgh Glass Center Inc.
Pittsburgh, PA
$20,000
To support a summer artist residency program. Artists will be provided with resources, facilities, and technical assistance for exploration in glass making.
Wheaton Village, Inc. (on behalf of Creative Glass Center of America)
Millville, NJ
$25,000
To support a residency program for emerging and mid-career glass artists. Artists will be provided with housing, a stipend, studio facilities, and technical assistance to work in glass."
National Endowment for the Arts FY 2007 Visual Arts Grants. http://www.nea.gov/grants/recent/disciplines/Visualarts/07visual.php?CAT=Access%20to%20Artistic%20Excellence&DIS=Visual%20Arts&TABLE=1
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