Two places going!

Every now and then I teach glass from my own studio in West Dulwich. One of my private courses is The Glass Class, which is a one day workshop for previous students of mine who wish to carry on making glass in a more ad hoc way.

If you have already learnt the basics from me – either on one of my West Dean courses or my Fuseability course at The Glass Studio – then you’ll be able to join us on the 12th October as I have two places left. Our day will be determined by what you want to do. Most students come with ideas of what they want to make and we usually spend a bit of time at the beginning of the day discussing these ideas as a group and working out what is possible in the time.

From there on in, you have access to lots of materials and equipment and of course expert guidance from me to help you realise your ideas. I am there if you need a few pointers on technique or a reminder of how to use equipment, but there is no formal teaching per se which will allow you maximum time to get on with your work.

Reasonably priced at £85, the cost of the workshop includes the kiln firing at the end of the day and the packaging and delivery of your pieces by courier within a few days of the course.

The day runs from 10.30am-6pm and most people bring their own packed lunch so as to leave as much time for glassmaking as possible.

If you’d like to join us on the 12th October, contact me here.

London Design Festival

September is an exciting time as it is the London Design Festival which centres on East London. I have got together with couple of my fellow Teepee Glass artists to organise a special exhibition of high quality craft with a design edge.

We are thrilled to be presenting the work of eight makers including glass, silver, ceramics and furniture in the show Designed | Crafted which will be opened in a beautiful gallery space in Rivington Street in the heart of the Old Street design district during London Design Festival.

If you would like to attend one of the Private Views on Thursday 11th or Tuesday 16th September between 7pm and 10pm, please get in touch

And if you are on Twitter, please do follow us on @DesignedCrafted and spread the word!

Malteser

I’ve just got back from a lovely week in sun-dried Malta to return to a rain-drenched Britain and despite the quite obvious contrasts in our climates, my first impression of the country was actually the noticeable similarities rather than the differences. Malta gained independence from the UK in 1964 but the British influence is still evident everywhere right down to the three pin plugs and the cars driving on the left. The Maltese language is a curious mixture of both Italian and Arabic influences, and it is the only historically Semitic language spoken in Europe so though it uses a Latin alphabet it includes modified letters. However everyone that we spoke to could speak perfect English, being as it is the other official language of Malta.

At only 120 square miles, the island is pretty tiny so we spent our week traversing back and forth on the Arriva-style buses, taking in the country. We took refuge from the sun in the shady maze-like streets of Mdina, the ancient walled city which was the old capital of the country. This is where St Paul the Apostle was said to have lived after being shipwrecked on the island, and its history stretches back 4000 years. Nowadays Mdina is home to just 300 inhabitants, and though you can find numerous private palaces, museums and a magnificent Cathedral within the medieval grid of narrow sandstone streets, one overwhelmingly feels the truth in its colloquial name – ‘The Silent City’. It felt like the highest point in Malta and, sipping cappuccinos on a museum cafe terrace, we were afforded an amazing view right across the flat landscape towards the northeastern coast.

We stayed in a gorgeous apartment in Spinola Bay, a picturesque harbour on the lively St Julian’s coastline. We looked out from our balcony each day to sight of the fishing boats bobbing in the early morning waters and the committed joggers getting in their exercise along the seafront before the sun got too hot. Curving round and out towards the laidback restaurant terraces and the lavish art hotel on the other side of Spinola Bay, the inlet reached its apogee at a busy roundabout marked by a contemporary sculpture. Richard England’s creamy white stone sculpture spells out the word LOVE twice over, but it has apparently antagonised locals that its letters are upside down.

Photo: www.globetrottergirls.com

On our first day’s exploratory walks in the area, we passed the love sculpture at 3pm when its intention was entirely obvious as there was a perfect shadow cast upon the pavement. But every time I returned to take another photograph, the sun was too high or too low to recreate the word against the ground. Perhaps it was the suggestion of the fleeting nature of love which was what had prompted local criticism? As if to counteract this interpretation the more romantic pairs of passers-by have started to mimic the Parisian habit of the Pont de l’Archevêché by attaching love-locks bearing their initials and tossing the key into the blue waters of the Mediterranean to declare their eternal love. We tried to follow this amorous tradition but, in typical Brit-style, logistics came before romance and the acquisition of a spare padlock seemed too much of a challenge!

Photo: www.britannica.com/

On our penultimate day we visited Valletta, the capital city which I had glimpsed many times from across the bay. The St John Co-Cathedral in the center of the city looked austere from outside, but rather took our breath away once inside. Every single surface was decorated in the most extravagant Baroque pattern and imagery, apparently added many years after the building of the church in the late 16th century. The lustrous gold surfaces on every decorative motif seemed to reflect the heat of the day which entered with the sweaty waves of tourists. Fans had been set up in the space but to little effect, and with the clutter of people and the clatter of cameras and audio guides, it was a relief to climb the stone steps up to a cooler inner room. I turned a corner and there, facing each other from either end of this sanctum, were two world-famous Caravaggio paintings: The Beheading of St John the Baptist and St Jerome Writing. Many years ago I did my degree in history of art at the Courtauld Institute, and I probably should have known about Caravaggio’s history in Malta but these extraordinary paintings came as a complete surprise. We sat quietly and enjoyed the chiaroscuro effects as we underwent our own form of chiaruscuro with our hot flushed faces cooling to a more normal skin tone colour in the dark of the church.

Photo: www.stjohnscocathedral.com

See further travel photos here

New course possibilities

West Dean College like to keep their tutors on their toes and their teaching programmes exciting, so we are often asked to submit ideas for new courses.

During my Summer School a couple of weeks ago, one of my students was a graphic designer from Amsterdam who made a very beautiful abstract leaded glass panel. The yellow piece she had intended for the middle of the panel turned out to be frustratingly reluctant to behave itself in the kiln. She was trying to get it to pick up the imprint of a pattern underneath but the glass kept blowing enormous bubbles. In the end she used a plain piece of glass in the leaded panel, but she was very excited by the possibilities of the yellow glass bubbles that she was left with.

One of these she labelled “My creative bubble” and left as a little inspiration to all the passing students with knowing smiles who were also enjoying their own creative bubble in their week at West Dean. But this obviously sparked off some creative thinking and as a side project, she also started working on the idea of layering glass.

She wanted to create a little scene inspired by our surroundings, with the rolling hills of the Sussex Downs, the college logo and a West Dean sheep peeking in from the front. We talked about how layers might be accommodated but leading doesn’t really lend itself towards layering. So instead I suggested that she spoke to the ever-inventive technicians at the college who created a bespoke box frame in which to mount the layers.

First-Box-Frame

This first foray into layering glass worked so well she made another one! This one had a little figure (herself) opening the door to her creativity and letting in a shaft of light. The parallax that always happens across a depth worked well in this piece because you had to shift your viewpoint to peer round the door and see what was behind.

All the work was carefully wrapped and packed and transported back to Amsterdam at the end of the week. Even the yellow glass bubbles made it safely through the journey and my student perhaps has some ideas of how she’ll use the bubbles in the future.

In the meantime, I have been left with the idea that creating a little fused glass ‘peep-box’ would make a really exciting new weekend course to teach at West Dean.

A Hard Week’s Work

I spent last week down in the beautiful surroundings of West Dean College for my annual Summer School sojourn. This is a week-long course which combines both fused glass and leaded glass and, as I always tell my students, it is challenging!

There are always a few problems to overcome when trying to fit a slightly distorted, rounded off shape made from kiln formed glass into a jigsaw-like leaded panel which requires meticulous accuracy. Usually there is some kind of trade off – a slight deviation from the cutline or a bit of ‘creative interpreting’ (otherwise known as botching!) – but in fact my students this year managed very well with what were fairly complicated panels.

Three pairs of hands

We had a range of approaches, from heavily detailed kiln formed textures to panels which only used a touch of fusing or slumping to achieve an interesting surface. The students worked incredibly hard, and there was some additional teamwork to get one or two of the panels finished on time. At one point I counted four pairs of hands working in combination to cement a panel, including my hands which took a brief break in order to take the photo above.

And what was the rush? Well, it is a long tradition at West Dean’s Summer School that the final evening is for a celebratory party. Each group usually creates a set of masks or hats or some such creative endeavour to mark them apart from the other groups during the party. But my students had worked so hard it seemed churlish to expect them to make anything more, so instead we went to the party dinner in our (clean) blue surgical gloves… the Blue Hand Gang!

Friday morning was the wonderful moment when we held the eight beautiful panels up to the light to finally see what everyone had produced over the course of the previous six days.

Just as much enjoyment was had by wandering around the college to see the work that had been produced on other courses.This year our neighbouring workshop was filled with amazing wooden automata by the students of Robert Race (below left). Each piece turned or moved back and forth in its own uniquely humorous way and we were amazed to see some students had produced five or six diffferent toys.

Up the stairs to the drawing studio and we came across beautifully conceived books made by students on Freya Pocklington’s ‘Creative Drawing’ course (top right). Wormholes and ragged edges made an appearance in various pages to show glimpses of the page beyond, and every one of those books made me want to create a little treasure of my own.

Downstairs in the courtyard was an installation created by resident poet Gary Goodman (bottom right). This had been growing across the course of the week and students had been intrigued to read the new phrases that were being added over time.

Land and Water in West Sussex

I’ve been working on a commission for the last few weeks which has been delivered but not yet installed. I gave a talk over my Summer School course at West Dean College on the making of the two glass panels for this commission so I have photographs of the making process. These panels will be installed into the porch of a house which is currently being built in West Sussex, and they are leaded panels but using thick textured kiln formed glass which will really hold and bounce the light around the patterned surfaces. My clients showed me images of traditional glass windows that they liked so I had an idea of their taste, and they were keen that the panels would include references to the local river, the sandstone in the village houses, local wildlife and the clients’ connection with cats and horses.

designs

After a few weeks of design development they agreed on my designs (above) which included an inscription in English and Latin, their initials and my monogram. The ‘Land’ panel on the left included a depiction of the row of sweet chestnuts behind their house and their kitchen garden as seen from above as well as the racing horses and a horseshoe to imbue the new house with luck. The ‘Water’ panel on the right includes the river flowing past the sandstone walls of the village, a pair of wagtails, and a hidden cat watching the birds, as well as its paw prints following the line of the wall.

Samples were sent (above left) to show the colours and level of texture of each piece in the designs. Once approved, the glass was cut to a full size cartoon. Every part of the panel was made with two layers of glass and its textural qualities were achieved in the kiln using a variety of techniques. Sometimes the texture was on the back surface, but most was on the front where it would be able to be touched once in situ.

Glass-before-leading

Once each piece had been formed in the kiln to get the right colour and textural qualities, I used blue tac to stick them up against my studio windows to get an overall impression with light coming through. Part of the glass artist’s challenge is to envision the whole image as it will be seen in situ. The light can change a composition dramatically with colours or textures reacting in various ways to the differing quality of light coming through the glass. However at this stage the clients were happy and I could see that although some pieces needed tweaking, the overall effect was good.

So the final stage was adding detail either with fusing, or with sandblasting (above left) or screenprinting (above right) and firing at a lower temperature to fix these details. Once all the glass had gone through the kiln for the final time, I used a grinder to get the exact fit between the pieces. This wouldn’t normally be needed with traditional painted glass, but when working with kiln formed glass which is 6mm thick and can get misshapen in the kiln, there is often some fine fitting work to be done which can take a while. Finally the glass is all leaded together using traditional tools, and the joints soldered so that the whole puzzle one has just created holds together. Cement is applied in all the gaps to give the panel strength and durability and then comes the unenviable task of polishing and cleaning the lead and glass…. not an easy job when the glass is pitted and textured. However it is always worth spending a bit of time on the final clean to really get it all pristine and to maximise the contrasts between the coloured glass and the dark lead lines.

final panels

The final pieces were taped up against a background of laminated glass so that I could get a quick snap of them before they were delivered to the site. Proper photos will be taken once the panels are installed.

Garden of Delights

Yesterday I spent a nightmare three hour journey driving down to Surrey – getting lost, missing my turns in all the road rebuilding, and getting caught on big roads going in completely the wrong direction. My route was so convoluted, I actually manged to cover four different counties and I almost made it to the south coast!

So after all the frustration of a hot, sticky journey which was about twice as long as it needed to be, it was heavenly to finally reach my destination, the Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden. Tucked away in a quiet pocket of Surrey, this is a lush oasis of a garden with plenty of peaceful, shady spots to sit and take in the scenery. Dotted about the ten acres of landscaped garden are a changing collection of contemporary sculptures.

I was there to meet a group of like-minded artists and garden designers and spend a day drawing and sketching. Organised by landscape designer Annie Guilfoyle, the day was a perfect opportunity to connect with other creatives and it was wonderful to get back into drawing, something of which I don’t do enough.

We had the entire garden to ourselves and Hannah herself came out intermittently to admire the work going on and give the odd word of advice. An impromptu picnic for lunch turned into a veritable feast as each member of the group unpacked more and more food, but the bonhomie over lunch was a good social recharging before the quiet calm of the afternoon sketching session.

The garden truly was the perfect setting for a perfect day…. right up to the miserable prospect of the long drive home.

August Opportunity

I am teaching my Summer School course at West Dean College again from the 2nd to the 8th of August. This is a challenging course as it covers both disciplines of kiln formed glass and leaded glass. Students spend the week designing and making a large leaded panel which incorporates a mixture of both traditional shop-bought stained glass as well as specially custom-made kiln formed glass. Some students even make their whole panel from glass that they have created in the kiln.

I still have two spaces on the course so if you have ever thought you might like to learn how to combine the two different techniques, this is a perfect opportunity. Summer School at West Dean is also fantastically enjoyable as there is more cross-pollination between courses than normal as well as various social events during the week, including an end of week party on the Thursday night which is always great fun.

If you are interested, get in touch with me.

An i-Lumen-ating experience

I had an odd experience last Friday. I had spent the day at a Business Club run by The Design Trust in a lovely sunny conference centre in Bloomsbury. We had been in the main meeting room all morning, then served lunch in the garden courtyard and attended a seminar in another side room, with the gentle sounds of the general public in the cafe at the front of the building.

Walking back towards the exit at the end of the day, I noticed some small stained glass windows dotted down the corridor. “That’s odd!” I thought… the stained glass was backwards, so I was looking at it the wrong way from the corridor, which meant that the front view was on the other side of the wall. As I followed the corridor down to investigate what was on the other side I was envisioning another meeting space. And then I turned the corner to discover that the cafe was in fact just the front end of a chapel! A chapel within a contemporary conference building? Surprising.

On speaking to the cafe manager, the penny dropped. Lumen was in fact a Church which had been redesigned in 2009 with dwindling congregation numbers in mind and thus rebuilt with the religious space being only one relatively small part of a larger multiple use centre.

Quite apart from being a beautifully designed space, it struck me that if I could spend a day in the building without actually realising it was a church, then the Lumen brand offers a challenging model for religious architecture in the 21st century.

Photo shoot heaven

I had the loveliest day yesterday working with my girl, Carine Lucchese, who is not only a very talented photographer but, as you can see from the pictures, is also a one-woman whirlwind of lighting and styling. I employed her to take portraits of me in my studio, but in between outfit changes she took the opportunity to set up little vignettes of products and packaging to photograph.

Other than for my wedding, the last time I was photographed by a professional was when I was seventeen and, I daresay, much more photogenic! However Carine is a fashion photographer and, although she usually works with proper models rather than the likes of me, she knows how to get the best out of a subject so I can’t wait to see the finished images.

Alex R | Glass Design

Musings on Glass and Life

Author: Alex R