THE GLASS BATON - A PERSONAL VIEW

All of the work on show in the ‘Glass Routes Exhibition’ represents the established practice of professional artists and designers who have been students, lecturers, visiting lecturers or researchers that have worked within the Glass Departments at Stourbridge College or at the University of Wolverhampton. (Stourbridge College moved to Wolverhampton in 1989.)

The constant within the exhibition is the incredible depth and range in the use of glass as an expressive material. Within the exhibition, glass is often seen as an individual unique material, but is also used quite naturally in conjunction with many other materials as exemplified in the work of Jo Newman (jewellery), Andrew Wilcox (furniture) and Ruth Spaak (textiles). The exhibition celebrates the range of approaches to glass and explores the network of influences across the world. Students have returned to their home countries, making contributions from within Europe, in Germany, Ireland, Finland, Spain, France, Norway, Sweden, Greece; within Asia in China, Indonesia, Japan; in both New Zealand and Australia; within the Americas in the USA and Colombia and within in Africa in Ghana and South Africa. Graduates have gone on to help establish educational programmes at the Plymouth College of Art and Design ( PCAD), University College Falmouth, and National College of Art Dublin, Ireland ( NCAD ) and at Pretoria Technikon (Tshwane University of Technology) and most recently at the Fine Arts College , Shanghai University and Tsinghua University, Beijing.

The artists, designers and craftspeople selected to show work provide a ‘glimpse’ of the past, present and future and show the range of possibilities open to creative people working with glass.

The exhibition design commences with recent research focussed work and examines the impact of research in the University of Wolverhampton glass subject under Professor Keith Cummings. It then moves into the ‘core group’ showing alongside a collection of Keith’s work. The main exhibition hall presents a range of work, including projected digital images of large scale public projects, featuring a 3 storey glass installation for the Canberra Parliament building in Australia by artist Maureen Cahill, owner of the Glass Artists Gallery in Sydney. It then examines the latest developments of Chinese glass culture at Universities in Shanghai and Beijing.

As a student at Stourbridge College in the 1970’s I was fortunate to arrive as the course began to evolve into a centre for personal and expressive uses of glass. Keith was just forming his own practice and working methodology in glass. I arrived with a background training in 20th Century sculptural thinking ( Henry Moore and Eduardo Paolozzi, etc) and influence, I was at once mesmerised and inspired by how an everyday material which everyone takes for granted, can assume such different mantles.

I had the opportunity to explore the material whilst engaging in understanding its potential expressive use and its application in the world. This was immensely challenging, if not totally confusing. We were offered a free hand in how we approached our thinking within and through the material, with a no holds barred perspective.

We benefited from visits by American artists like Sam Herman and Dale Chihuly who made us aware of an expanding uninhibited global community in glass. The emphasis moved rapidly from using wholly industrial techniques and practice towards an openness of approach that included enquiry and self expression, all under the scrutiny and encouragement of Keith Cummings. We also benefitted from the depth of technical help and support available within the department and the larger regional glass making community of Stourbridge.

Many projects were run with Stuart Crystal Ltd or Royal Brierley Crystal Ltd in Stourbridge or Dartington Glass in Devon. Occasionally students were successful in employment at factories as designers or heads of design; Will Cort became head of design at Royal Doulton Crystal and so continued this cross pollination of a more visionary art and craft infusion into the industrial context.

But with the demise of the traditional industries in the UK, other opportunities within the studio glass economy have taken precedence and have become the backbone of small business within art and design. This has become a force of ‘regeneration’ in traditional manufacturing communities that lost industries like glass. To be successful, graduates must have a clear understanding of their market, but most of all they have to be incredibly entrepreneurial in their vision and activities.

So what makes glass so special? As Keith himself says, glass is often a material skill handed down as a legacy from person to person and its value is not always understood by the recipient until much later.

The students at the University of Wolverhampton benefited from both the technical insight and knowledge provided by Keith and the team of lecturers and visiting practitioners, like artist designer Katy Holford. More provocatively they were challenged throughout their study to form an original context and future in glass practice for their own work while being made aware of a much bigger, rapidly developing international practice defined by sculptural and metaphoric intentions. The work was no longer limited by industrial practice of the glass arts, technical dexterity and prowess.

The work on exhibition from Stourbridge College and the University of Wolverhampton is united and bound together by glass, but within that the approaches and possibilities are limitless. None of us have been restricted by one overarching identity or one approach to how we use it. What I hope we can see is a broad spectrum of practitioners who are once joined by a material but who engage in it in a multitude of ways. Whilst glass practice is exceedingly demanding, a complex and technical material to use the outputs are varied and eccentric. At any one time students and practitioners are engaging with glass at jewellery scale, as unique fine art and sculptural installations, in architectural and interiors structures, as unique design work
and industrial product development, as well as the hand crafted making of haute couture objects.

If anything this show illustrates that there is no one model and everyone interprets their practice in a highly individualistic manner. Many artists’ work encompasses more than one perspective. For example the work of David Reekie, acknowledges the early dual influences and practice of Keith Cummings and the sculptor in glass, Harry Seager. David’s entire development and methodology from ideas, to sketches, to models and maquettes and finally to glass casts are all important moments along a creative pathway and the final object whilst being ‘frozen’ in a moment of making and delivery, seems no more important than the journey leading to it.

Equally many of these artists have a varied output to progress their ideas and sustain their development over a long period , so they do not become stilted and limited by a formula for success. My work as an example has engaged with product design with industry, most notably with Rosenthal AG in Germany. I was also mindful to avoid the mundane and purely commercial by producing unique works using industrial production techniques and in larger scale objects. In 2002 I worked with Dr Vanessa Cutler, to develop a glass and stainless steel throne for the University of Wolverhampton Chancellor.

What of the future? When you look at the new generation of Chinese glass artists you can see the very same journey. They are accelerating at great speed and through their ancient Chinese culture respond to changes in their international and cultural roles. The sheer speed of the changes going on in China make it difficult to identify and define the exact characteristics of one new model and not everyone is convinced by such rapid changes towards world commercialism or consumerism, least of all the artists themselves. It is still difficult to define the characteristics that are emerging, but look closely here and you can see change is rapidly underway.

These glass artists are immersed in their ancient culture, but emerging from that are many characteristics of a ‘new way’ of interacting with a global audience in world design on a world stage. They are expressing themselves personally on the one hand whilst bridging the infinite cultural depths and reconnecting their traditions, using materials and aesthetics as in the work of Xue Lu ( Shelly ) and Guan Donghai. They both work with different outputs and scales, as does Zhuang Xaiwei. Shelly’s work has an intimacy on a small scale which owes much to her cultural past (see her paper ’The Glass Seed’). Her new work takes this cultural aesthetic into an architectural scale and recognises the new Chinese economy and its opportunities for artists and designers which are sweeping the country. Both leading educational glass centres at Shanghai and Beijing have intimate partnerships with the local glass industries, this ‘mirrors’ the model which has existed at Stourbridge College and the University of Wolverhampton since the establishment of the first regional glass course at Stourbridge in 1853. Except of course the potential of the Chinese industries has only just begun to rise. On my recent visit to China I visited 6 Chinese Universities and many industrial centres, I was struck by the parallels of practice I had observed in Europe and the UK industries. The difference being that they are aware of the vast potential of modernising their industrial plant. The Chinese retain a contemporary version of their traditional practices in modern design at every level, from jewellery to massive architectural application for a global audience and market. In this, these recent Chinese graduates have much to offer and mirror their counterparts in the evolution of glass here at the University of Wolverhampton. We all depend up the ongoing exploration of the GlassRoutes which are developing between us.


Stuart Garfoot,
Head of Glass at the University of Wolverhampton,
Curator of ‘Glass Routes’ Exhibition,
Editor of the exhibition catalogue,
Organiser of the ‘Creative Pathways’ Symposium.

Glass Baton pdf

FOREWORD
Professor Tim Collins: Foreword

ESSAYS
Professor Andrew Brewerton: Glass Routes
Professor Keith Cummings: Continuity and Change in Glass History
Stuart Garfoot: The Glass Baton, A Personal Overview
Susanne Frantz: Glass Tiger
Associate Professor Xiaowei Zhuang: The Development of Studio Glass at Shanghai University
Associate Professor Guan Donghai: Creating With Glass
Dr Kristina Niedderer: Developing Glass Practice Through Creative Research
Xue Lu (Shelly): Growing With the Soil of China

Stuart Garfoot: Introduction to Creative Pathway
David Reekie: Creative Pathway 1
Katy Holford: Creative Pathway 2