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.

Recent Mel Simpson Acquisitions

Mel Simpson was one of the pioneers of studio glass in New Zealand, and one of the founders of the NZ Society Artists of in Glass (1980), which continues today as the national glass artists' organisation in NZ.

Mel learnt his glass-blowing in the USA at UCLA (1975), having gone to the US to do a post-graduate design degree (Illinois 1974), but he discovered glass while he was there. His first degree was BFA from Elam School of Fine Arts at Auckland (1971) and he returned to Elam to teach. He established the glass facilities there with a QEII grant in 1978. Ann Robinson, Garry Nash, Peter Raos and others were all students of his there. He received two further QEII awards in 1981 and 1983, and exhibited widely in NZ and overseas between 1980 and 1993.

I was pleased to acquire this piece of Mel's on TradeMe recently. It is signed MEL SIMPSON 1979, making it one of the earlier pieces of his that I have. It's a thick walled, heavy circular vase, with an integral 'saucer' shape at the base. Underneath it has had quite a bit of grinding to make it sit smoothly. Because it is so thick, it's hard to determine the colour of the glass, but it's probably dark blue rather than black. The surface has been lightly iridised.
It is 14.5cm high.
 
I don't think it is one of his best pieces.

However, Mel persisted with the general idea of trailed decoration on the outside of an iridised vessel, making this very much more successful rectangular box in 1984. While still quite heavy, it is lighter and thinner walled, and the base grinding is better handled.  The whole body is iridised, except for the rim, which has been left plain.  It is signed M S 84, and is 13.5cm high.

I bought this on TradeMe as well, and I was especially pleased with it because it is so well provenanced. The parents of the person selling it had bought it at the 1984 Philips Studio Glass Award exhibition at Auckland Museum. Even better,they had retained the catalogue showing the piece and that was included in the Trademe auction.It was number 37 in the catalogue, and cost them $90, rather less than I paid for it, but I was very pleased to get such a well provenanced piece. It is described in the catalogue as "Blue Box (fumed)", and is one of the pieces selected to be illustrated in the catalogue. To have an illustrated catalogue was quite sophisticated at the time, but sadly the small monochrome images don't do justice to the pieces shown.

Keith Mahy - one of the pioneers

Photo: Stephen Robinson

I have been saddened to learn of the death in Whangarei of Keith Mahy, on Friday 14 June 2013. Keith was the first New Zealand born studio glass artist (I think only English Reg Kempton and American Tony Kuepfer predate him in New Zealand). But Keith's involvement with glass began well before he set up his studio in that former cow shed at Otonga, between Hikurangi and Whakapara in Northland in 1976.  

Keith was born in Whakatane in 1947 and studied sculpture and design at the Elam School of Fine Arts at Auckland University, graduating with a Diploma in Fine Arts in 1969. He won the New Zealand Manufacturers Association Student Design award in 1967, and on completing his studies worked in packaging design in Auckland. In 1970 he was appointed Design Director at Crown Crystal Glass in Christchurch. Keith designed many of the successful ranges of glassware produced by Crown Crystal Glass, including Anker which won a Designmark award in 1970 and Aragon, Designmark 1971.

But designing glass for others to make wasn't enough for Keith, so in 1975 he left Crown Crystal to set up his own studio at Otonga. He built his own wood burning gas kiln, and made his own moulds out of pear wood.

 

I don't think Keith signed any of his early work, so identifying pieces is not easy, but I think these are examples of his glass from that time. The manaia-like handle terminals were a distinctive feature of his work.

In 1982, the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council provided Keith with a grant to equip his new studio at Paparoa, and this enabled him to improve the quality of his glass. He exhibited in the Philips Studio Glass Award exhibitions at Auckland Museum in 1984, when he received a Merit Award (highly commended), and in 1985 and 1986.

Merit Award 1984 Philips Studio Glass

1985 Philips Studio Glass

In the 1986 Philips

catalogue, he wrote: "Living in the country on a historic Maori Pa site on the Pahi Peninsula which juts into the North Kaipara harbour, has prompted me to install my own wood gas plant to utilise local resources and to cope with the high energy demands of melting glass in a furnace. 

1986 Philips Studio Glass

This, combined with working in an environment surrounded by trees, farmland, and ever changing tidal inlets, as well as the exciting properties of hot glass, like transparency, reflection, refraction, colour and its particular spontaneity, are the main influences on my work at present."

In 1986, in the developing environment of craft education in New Zealand, Keith became a part time tutor in Glass and Design at Northland Polytechnic in Whāngārei. A QEII grant was made in 1988 to extend the studio at the Polytech, and Keith taught glass there for a number of years, until the facility became a casualty of the reforms in craft education which undid the previous good work. Quite a number of present day glass artists learned or enhanced their skills under Keith's guidance.

An exhibition piece from the late 1980s

One of those was glass caster Shona Firman with whom Keith established both a life partnership and from 1995 'Burning Issues' studio and gallery in the Whangarei Town basin, to which they were able to relocate completely once the Polytechnic closed.

2001 example of Keith's 'shard' vases

In 1997, Keith and others developed the Beachcomber Glass Studio in Rarotonga, followed in 1999 by a training course there for young potential Rarotongan glass artists

2002 cage glass perfume bottle

2003 feathered perfume bottle

   

One of Keith's most recent colleagues, Rebecca Heap, posted this photo on Facebook on 16 June, with the note: "This afternoon we emptied the pot and turned off the heart beat at Mahy Glass amidst lots of fire and steam. With family and friends present it was the saddest shut down I have ever done." 

Keith Mahy was one of the pioneers of studio glass in New Zealand.  His passion for glass, his teaching and mentoring of others, his creativity in his own glass work and above all his friendly nature will be sadly missed.

Kharen Hope Made Flat Glass Too

I blogged a few days ago about a piece in my collection by Kharen Hope, and outlined the information I had been able to gather on this artist, previously unknown to me.  Several people I met in Whanganui recently during the Festival of Glass recalled Kharen when she was a student and a staffer in the Glass department at UCOL, and suggested she now lives in Wellington.

However, new information has come to light from an unexpected source.  A reader of my blog offered me a piece by Mel Simpson, which will feature in a forthcoming entry.  With the piece he gave me a copy of the catalogue for the 1984 Philips Studio Glass Award.  This is great, since while I had 1985 and 1986, I lacked this first exhibition catalogue.

Browsing through, I was surprised and delighted to see number 12, a piece entitled 'Aging', entered by Kharen Hope of Matapouri.

The catalogue images are not brilliant, and are all monochrome.  It's not easy to see the detail of the lettering around the left and top borders, but it appears to say 'aNd So tHeY GRoW old, AnD sO wE gRow olD aNd SO I groW OlD'.  At $2665 this was one of the most expensive works in the show. The late James Walker had the most expensive entry at $4500. Ann Robinson's pioneering pate de verre bowl was priced at $500 - I think Auckland Museum bought that.  Kharen  was the only artist giving Matapouri as her address, Matapouri being a coastal settlement northeast of Whangarei.

So now I know that Kharen began her glass career working in flat glass, before going to UCOL in Whanganui to develop her skills under Tony Kuepfer's tuition, and branch out into hot glass, and make the pieces I showed in my earlier blog.  The catalogue also confirms the spelling of her name with an 'h' in Kharen.  It's great to be able to add a little more information.