Katie Brown at Chronicle Glass

Going to the recent conference of NZ Society of Artists in Glass in Whanganui gave me the chance to visit Chronicle Glass and see the work of Katie Brown, and indeed to watch her blowing glass. I bought three of her wonderful Whispers, like those shown in the photo here, from the Wanganui Glass Group website. I bought a group of three red ones - they are stunning.

Katie completed a Diploma in Glass at Wanganui in 1999, and then had the opportunity to work with Josh Simpson in Massachusetts and Neil Wilkin in the UK. With Lyndsay Patterson she is one of the partners at Chronicle Glass, a wonderful open studio in Wanganui where you can see glass making, and indeed try it yourself on one of their introductory courses.

Libby Gray's Name is Perhaps Not Well Known

A recent acquisition of a piece signed L.G. '81 N.Z. is a reminder that some NZ glass artists are not well recognised, and their work is thus readily available to those who know what they atre looking for.

Quite a number of glass artists worked with Tony Kuepfer in Inglewood, as assistants, students and colleagues, while others continued at the studio after he left to teach at Whanganui.

Libby Gray came to spend a week or so at the studio in 1978, then moved to Inglewood in 1979 or 80, and worked full time there for several years. I have pieces in my collection dated between 1981 and 1984. She moved to Wellington to work for the Crafts Council in 1985 or 86, and later moved to Whanganui, as an administrator at Unicol.

I have slowly been adding pieces of Libby's work to my collection as opportunity allows, but the best pieces I have seen are in her own collection, which she kindly showed me a few years ago.

NZSAG Goes Live

After a lot of hard work, the revamped website of the New Zealand Society of Artists in Glass is up and running at http://www.nzsag.co.nz/Home-0.html . There are galleries of Members' work, details of membership and news and information. Importantly, there are details of the upcoming Conference 'Outside the Square' to be held in Whanganui in February next year. NZSAG welcomes as members anyone interested in New Zealand glass (if you're not a glass artist, you can become an Associate Member). Membership entitles you to participate in things like the conference and to receive the wonderful 'Glass News'. It's highly recommended!

Pacific Light Exhibition of New Zealand Glass by Emma Camden and David Murray in New York

If you live in New York, you've probably just missed the wonderful exhibition 'Pacific Light' at the Chappell Gallery on W 26th St. Emma Camden and David Murray cast glass in their home in a former Masonic Lodge in Whanganui, on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand. British born Emma came to New Zealand in 1991, and has taught and cast glass in Auckland and Whanganui. She has exhibited at Chappell Gallery several times.

Emma's partner David Murray was initially a potter, but he turned to glass following a glass casting workshop taught by Emma in 1997, working initially as her assistant from 2000.

Emma's work has an architectural quality as she has explored especially buildings and structures, as well as making smaller objects and tools with personal associations (I talked about one of these in my blog on 30 June 2007). David has drawn inspiration from artefacts such as stone adzes and bowls.

These images show Emma's work (top) and David's (lower), and come from the Chappell Gallery website: http://chelseaartgalleries.com/Chappell+Gallery/Pacific+Light.html

An Early Piece of Sunbeam Glass?

This unsigned green decanter probably dates from the first period of glass making at Sunbeam Glass in Auckland. The lady I bought it from is certain she bought it in 1979 in Jervois Rd. She said "I remember going down an alley and here were these two or three glass artists at work." That would suggest she was at a glass blowing studio rather than a dealer gallery, and Sunbeam seems to be the only one to fit the description. The studio in Jervois Rd was behind the shop, shown at right.

Sunbeam was established in 1976 by John Croucher and James Walker, but operated a bit like a co-op, with a number of people involved and working there in a number of media. After a reorganisation in 1980, Garry Nash and Ann Robinson became partners with John Croucher, and it entered its second phase, playing a leading role in the development of glass art in New Zealand. But in 1979 Ann Robinson and Garry Nash weren't there. John Croucher has said "I don't know who made this piece. It could have been made by Danny Keighly, Ken Cooke, or myself (although I don't think so)." The glass has distinctive black flecks in it - Garry Nash has commented: "It could be any one at that time. The glass is coloured with chrome oxide or potassium bichromate, the chrome is highly refractory and requires a very high temperature to melt, without flakes of chrome metal precipitating out of solution and causing black spots. It was a common problem in the early days with every one panicking about the price of gas and fear that the furnace would melt!"

So it is not certain who made this, but it would seem most likely to be by one of these first Sunbeam glass artists. I'm delighted to have it in my collection.

Beer bottle glass was used in these ash trays

The late James Mack, former Director of the Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt, wrote that his father worked the night shift at the AHI Glass factory in Penrose, and as a 10 year old James was fascinated to see the workers 'pluck red hot beer bottles from the production line and fashion them into things fantastical.  Their best efforts were swan ashtrays, sensitively conceived but crudely rendered'.

Most of these ash trays are brown, but there are clear and green ones, using milk and wine bottle glass. 'Kia ora' (or sometimes 'Kai ora' if they got the spelling wrong) is a common motto - this recent acquisition has 'Happy Days' and the date 1966. Dates are not common, but all the dated ones I have seen are 1966.

These epergne style ash trays are the most elaborate I have seen. They have no motto or date.

Tony Kuepfer tortoiseshell glass from TradeMe

My latest TradeMe acquisition is the beautiful bowl on the right. I have two other pieces like it, in the same very distinctive 'tortoiseshell' pattern. It is not signed, but has Tony's distinctive cross-pontil mark. The others I bought several years apart at a second hand shop and a street fair. The bottle is clearly signed AWK '90, giving me a good date for the other two, since they are so similar. Tony was working at Whanganui at that time. It's nice to be able to assign some certainty to unsigned pieces.