The vessel form is the stimulus for this international invitational exhibition. Artists from around the globe were invited to express their creativity and interpret the vessel form, whether functional, sculptural or decorative, using their own particular language and methodology. The result is an inspiring feast of artistic expression, affirming the extraordinary creativity of the studio glass movement.

Webster’s Dictionary describes a vessel in very simple terms as “a utensil for holding something, as a bowl or kettle, etc.”  The vessel appears in many forms throughout history and in literature. The Sangreal is the vessel from which our Savior drank at the Last Supper. The Delias was the sacred vessel made by Theseus and sent annually from Athens to Delos. A vessel is literally a waterborne ship, or a starship, the physical body[1] or the soul.[2]

Since the earliest days of glass manufacture glass vessels have been used to store valuable commodities – from wine and oil  to lotions and emollients.  Until about 50 B.C. glass objects could only be made slowly. Using casting, core forming, or cutting techniques, a vessel might take several days to make by. Because it was so difficult and time-consuming to make, glass was a rare luxury item. That situation changed with the discovery of glass blowing. Roman people, probably in Phoenicia (mostly modern Lebanon) discovered that an object could be formed by gathering molten glass on the end of a hollow blowing pipe, and inflating it like a bubble. It could be blown into a hollow mold to form it or freely shaped with simple tools on the end of the blowpipe. For the first time, a worker could mass-produce dozens of objects a day with glassblowing techniques, so glass vessels became common and relatively inexpensive.

Glass, particularly blown glass, naturally lends itself to the vessel form. It is a flexible, malleable, inert material that is readily transformed in the hands of the skilled artist. “There is a real choreography to blowing glass, a rhythmic motion akin to dancing that appeals to me. It’s very alive. You have to keep moving, you can’t stop,” says glass artist Toots Zynsky

Lino Tagliapietra is widely recognized as the finest glass artist using Italian glass blowing techniques. In all of his work one can recognize the underlying influences of the centuries old art form as practiced on the island of Murano in the Venice lagoon. What makes him a truly great artist is his ability to constantly innovate, combining color, texture and form in a vocabulary that is truly his own.

Steven Powell’s vessels are a sumptuous blend of color and heart-stopping scale. A color-field artist, from Danville, Kentucky, his signature vessels have nothing to do with practicality but are meditative explorations in color manipulation in relation to surface modulation.

In sharp contrast to Powell’s explosive use of color, Bert Frijns, from the Netherlands, transforms a very familiar material – flat plate glass – into sculptural vessel forms of elegant simplicity. His are subtle works, explorations in three dimensions of line, volume and space.

 American Toots Zynsky employs a kiln-forming technique that is in some ways similar to that of Bert Frijns. Her base material consists of thousands of colored glass threads that are fused together and then hand-manipulated still while hot to create vessel forms. Her explosive use of color is inspired by among other things, the brilliant colors of Italian medieval and renaissance paintings. The resulting vessels are a balance between fragility and carefully considered sculptural manipulation.

Ronald Pennell and Lisabeth Sterling are glass engravers who transform the surfaces of their blown glass vessels with diamond-tool engraving techniques. Theirs are narrative works, with figures, flora and fauna enveloping the surface in delicately rendered fine detail. Sterling’s work has a contemporary, often sociopolitical meaning to it while Pennell creates highly personal images of fantastic beasts – harpies, rhinos, crocodiles, tigers and pet terriers - drawn from his imagination and the everyday world of rural Herefordshire, England.

Santa Fe artist C.S. Tarpley sandblasts Celtic, Mayan, Greek, Chinese and Native American inspired geometric patterns deep into the surface of his blown glass vessels. He then employs a difficult and rarely used method of electroforming to fuse copper onto the surface of the carved glass forms. “Every design I use is universal and appears in European and African traditions as well as Native American,” says Tarpley. “The multicultural nature of these motifs appeals to my sense of place in our modern culture and allows me to honor the multiple nationalities and ethnicities that comprise my family.”

Gizela Šabóková, from Prague, is one of the rising stars of the current generation of Czech glass artists. Hers are sculptural works with no illusions of functionality. They are monumental cast glass sculptures that utilize deep, rich, concentrated color and rough, carved surface details. This combination gives her works a geological look and feel, which seems to mimic the textures of stone, ice and lava while encompassing the colors of the setting African sun, a blast furnace or of a frozen Antarctic iceberg.

Glass blower Sonja Blomdahl’s vessels are an exploration of elegant form and sophisticated color. A highly respected and sought after artists living and working in Seattle, she combines traditional encalmo glass forming and craved battuto finishing techniques to create vessels that radiate with the intensity of their colors and the purity of their forms.

Colin Reid, from Gloucestershire, England, creates vessels from kiln cast optical glass. ”If I were to identify a single thread that runs through my work it would be nature.  That is the source to which I return for inspiration and fresh material for my work. Stone, weathered wood, sand, all feature.”  The firing process is lengthy, taking anywhere up to three weeks to get the desired thickness and depth of glass from which he grinds, polishes and sandblasts the finished forms.

The canals and lagoon of Venice are the inspiration for the work of Massimo Micheluzzi. “When you live here (Venice) you mentally live in the water,” he says. “It’s an image in my mind all day, every day, with even knowing it.”  The hallmark of his work is the deep-cutting battuto technique, which he uses to create fluid, intricate swirls across the surface of his vessels. This glass carving technique was pioneered by the Romans and rediscovered by the great 20^th century designer Carlo Scarpa.

Blown, cast, kiln-formed, sandblasted, slumped, painted, fused and electroformed, this most humble of materials – glass – has been transformed into objects of great beauty by this remarkable group of artists for our collective enjoyment and aesthetic appreciation.

Brion Clinkingbeard
December 2002

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[1] Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

W.H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden. In Memory of W.B. Yeats, Another Time (1940).

 

[2] “A man’s interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full; so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again,” George Bernard Shaw, (1919). Captain Shotover, in Heartbreak House, act 2,

 

[3] Director, Mint Museum of Craft and Design, Charlotte, North Carolina.