Crackle Glass by Chuck Simpson

Until now I've been only dimly aware of crackle glass, a form I tended to associate with trinkets from some European and American glass factories, and not something that appealed to me at all.  

So I was very surprised when this cranberry red crackle glass decanter appeared on TradeMe. 

The listing read: 

Cranberry crackle glass decanter with stopper.  
Very pretty and in lovely condition.
 
Signed by Chuck Simpson 1989. 
Very collectible piece.
28cm x 10cm 

No-one except me showed any interest in it, so my bid was successful. Now it has arrived I can confirm it is clearly signed Chuck Simpson 1989, when Chuck was working at Inglewood.

I can't recall seeing any other piece of crackle ware made by a New Zealand glass artist. Of course, now I'm hoping other examples will show up.

An article by Stan & Arlene Weitman in Angela Bowey's Online Glass Museum http://www.glass.co.nz/crackle.htm  tells me that crackle glass is formed by immersing the glass in cold water while it is still molten hot, thereby cracking the glass. The glass is then reheated and either mold or hand blown into the shape desired. The reheating of the glass seals the cracks. On the outside of crackle glass you can feel the cracks, but the inside is smooth.

Having experienced what happens when a hot glass object is dropped accidentally into a bucket of water (the explosion put my young daughter off visiting glass works for a number of years!), it sounds like a scary process, but it does create an interesting effect.



I will be interested to hear of other pieces of New Zealand crackle glass. I wonder how much of it Chuck Simpson made.

Inglewood Cards Provide Great Provenance

I mentioned in my last post the great provenance provided for a recent acquisition by a catalogue from the first Philips Studio Glass Award exhibition in 1984. Here's a piece of Chuck Simpson's glass I purchased recently, which also has a great confirmation of its provenance.

This is clearly signed  'Chuck Simpson', so there can be no doubt who made it. But Chuck Simpson made glass at Byron Bay in Australia before he came to Inglewood with Lesley Justin in 1987, and he made glass at Eumundi in Queensland after he and Lesley, by then his wife, returned to Australia in 1990. It is typical of glass he made at Inglewood, but it is great to have its New Zealand origin confirmed by the marketing card that came with it.

 

But that is not the first Inglewood piece to have come with its own marketing card.  The piece to the left is signed 'Glass Art NZ', a name which seems to have been used both by Chuck and Lesley Simpson and by Andrew Williams, though that is not currently totally clear. All three of them were doing quite similar work, as individually signed pieces by each of them demonstrate.

When I purchased it on TradeMe, it came with a small laminated card, printed on both sides.

The card is delightful for the stylised sketch of the Inglewood church and studio where Tony Kuepfer first set up the studio that he called Glass Plant, subsequently used by Chuck and Lesley and by Andrew. 

This photo, taken in Inglewood in October 2012, shows that the church, with the concrete block studio that Tony Kuepfer built, has reverted to its original religious purpose.

 


The small vase at the right is also signed 'Glass Art NZ', but the card that came with it leaves no doubt that this was indeed made by Andrew Williams. The metallic sheen on the card and its slightly crumpled state makes it a little hard to photograph. I wonder who is represented in the drawing?

  

It is also interesting to see Andrew playing on the history of the Inglewood studio in his marketing. I'm not sure if he was aware of Reg Kempton's studio at Havelock, but Reg had died by this time, so the claim would seem to me to be correct.

Whanganui Plans a Great Festival in September 2013

I've had a couple of pleasing responses to my blogs recently. Chuck and Indiah Simpson's daughter, Whitney-Leigh emailed, expressing appreciation of my words and photos of her parents' work from Inglewood in the 1980s. And the latest Newsletter of the Wanganui Glass Group says "Stuart’s Blog is very well researched and is a great starting point for all of us with an interest in, and appreciation for NZ Glass." It's great when those I write about are interested to read what I write!

The Newsletter also brings preliminary news of the events that are being planned for the Wanganui Festival of Glass, to be held in Whanganui from 7 - 15 September this year. Whanganui is a city that its proud of its glass artists, and the annual Festival showcases the best of their work.  The Festival provides a wide range of opportunities to see glass exhibitions, visit artists in their studios, watch visiting glass experts as they give master classes, admire the work of the up and coming among the students at the Whanganui Glass School, and, of course, to acquire glass. It looks like a very full programme, with many of the best features from past year's events as well as some new ones. I'm certainly hoping to be able to get to Whanganui during that week to take part.



The flyer for the Festival pictured at left features the distinctive work of Whanganui glass artist Carmen Simmonds. Herself a graduate of UCOL Whanganui, and a Ranamok finalist, Carmen has a studio in the countryside outside Whanganui.



The Glass Group Newsletter advises that one of David Traub's beautiful platters (at right) will feature on the poster, the billboards and the event guide for the Festival. David is a former Head of the Glass School, whose involvement in making glass goes back to 1973.

I am delighted to have in my own collection an early example of David's platters, which he made in 2002.

NZ Society Artists in Glass Conference at Glassplant, Inglewood April 1983

The New Zealand Society of Artists in Glass was founded in August 1980 at the first New Zealand Glassworkers' Symposium held in Taradale. The next year the first NZSAG Conference was held at The Hot Glass Company in Devonport.  Since then, NZSAG has held a conference every other year, where glass artists meet to discuss and demonstrate their work.  An important element of these conferences has often been the invitation to international glass artists to come to talk, to teach, to demonstrate, as one way for New Zealand artists to augment their skills. The Devonport conference was attended by Americans Richard Marquis and Ed Carpenter, in hot glass and flat glass respectively.

In April 1983 NZSAG held its Conference at the Glass Plant in Inglewood, the studio of Tony Kuepfer. This coincided with the holding of the first major exhibition of art glass in New Zealand, Pacific Glass '83 at the Govett Brewster Gallery in New Plymouth.  The exhibition and the conference marked a major milestone in the development of glass art in New Zealand, and in public perception of it as a new and vibrant art form.

Rear (standing): Marvin Lipofksy; unknown cameraman; Peter Viesnik; Jenny Granville (obscured); Mel Simpson; Holly Sanford (yellow); Julie Podjursky (Peterson); Ken Cooke (behind by door); Johannes Schreiter (behind); Peter Minson; Ede Horton (behind with mug); Linley Adams (Main); Jo Shroff; ; unknown (behind); Libby Gray; Piers Anderson (behind); Victoria Noble; Robert Middlestead (obscured); John Croucher; Rob Hooper (waving); Pat Grove-Hill; Roger Pemberton; Fred Daden (back turned); Marg Osbourne (leaning on sign)

 Front (kneeling): Keith Rowe; John Abbott; Tony Kuepfer; Makoto Ito; a gap ; Lyn McLean; James Walker; unknown; Garry Nash; John Leggott (with apple); Ann Robinson (with the milk for tea); Marg Osbourne (with camera)

Serendipitously I recently came across some photographs taken at the conference by Tim Edwards, then an architecture student writing a thesis on 'Art in Architecture', who took lots of photos with a view to using them in his thesis work.  Now an antique dealer in Wellington (excellentantiques.co.nz), Tim kindly provided me with copies of some 70 of his slides. I've been in correspondence with quite a number of those who were at the conference, as well as some who weren't, and with their help I have identified most of those in the photos.  In particular, two group photographs posed outside the converted former church that was Glassplant present pretty much a who was who of NZ glass at the time (though a number of people either couldn't attend, or were somewhere else when these photos were taken). Many of these people are still active in glass 29 years later, some are no longer working, and one or two are deceased.  The photos include international guest lecturers Fred Daden (UK), Makoto Ito (Japan), Marvin Lipofsky (USA), Johannes Schreiter (Germany), and Australians Peter Minson and Keith Rowe (in fact a Kiwi, but a long time Oz glass artist).  Ito, Lipofsky and Schreiter were among the exhibitors in Pacific Glass '83.  The two photos are similar, but there are some people in one and not the other, so I include them both.

Rear (standing): Marvin Lipofksy; David Clegg (cap); Peter Viesnik; Jenny Granville (peeking); unknown; Mel Simpson; Holly Sanford (yellow); Julie Podjursky Peterson; Ken Cooke (behind); Johannes Schreiter (behind); Peter Minson; Ede Horton (behind); Linley Adams/Main; Jo Shroff; Libby Gray; Piers Anderson (behind); Victoria Noble; John Croucher; Rob Hooper (beard); Pat Grove-Hill; Fred Daden; Marg Osbourne (with camera)

Front (kneeling): John Abbott; Tony Kuepfer; Makoto Ito;  a gap ; Lyn McLean; unknown; Garry Nash; John Leggott (with apple)

It's been great fun trying to identify these photos accurately.  I accept sole responsibility if I have got something wrong, or if someone I should have picked is labelled 'unknown'; please let me know so I can make any necessary corrections.  I am very grateful to Tim Edwards for permission to publish his photos.

Chuck Simpson was not Canadian

A mistake I made in my article on the history of glass in New Zealand came home to haunt me the other day.  In New Zealand Glass Art I described Inglewood glass artist Chuck Simpson as being Canadian.  A trader on TradeMe offering a stoppered bottle by Chuck (at right - TradeMe 428728782) apparently followed my mistake by saying Chuck was Canadian. 

I'm not sure where I got the idea from, but I was wrong. A fascinating article about Chuck Simpson's glass appeared in the Australian journal Craft Arts International (32, 1994-5 p79).  It included biographical information indicating that Chuck was born in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, in 1944. He got a Bachelor's degree in Education in Pennsylvania, and then taught secondary school for fifteen years, mostly in Victoria, Australia.  In 1985 he began working in the hot glass studio of Colin Heaney at Byron Bay in northeastern New South Wales, before moving to New Zealand and leasing Tony Kuepfer's studio at Inglewood. (Thanks to Trevor Breusch for drawing my attention to the CAI article).


The piece at left I bought in 1990 from Masterworks gallery in Parnell, Auckland - it would have been one of the last pieces Chuck made in New Zealand before returning to Australia and the Vesta Hot Glass studio he set up at Eumundi in Queensland with his wife Lesley (formerly Lesley Justin).

Sadly, Chuck Simpson died in April 2001.