Fluid glass

Scientists describe glass as "an amorphous solid": neither liquid nor solid, but "somewhere between those states of matter".[1] This fluid identity is reflected in the diversity of glass in Aotearoa: from dark volcanic obsidian and robust preserving jars to radiant stained glass windows and delicate jewellery.

Industrial glass in one form or another has been produced here since the 19th century, and in the 1960s individual makers began to explore more fully the fluid nature of glass and its potential as a creative medium.

By Rigel Sorzano

Glass comes to Aotearoa

Nature was Aotearoa's first glassmaker, creating fulgurites – tubes or crusts of glass formed by lightning striking sand – and obsidian, a volcanic glass widely used by Māori to make cutting and scraping tools.[2] Man-made glass arrived in 1839, when window glass was brought over by boat from Europe, and leadlight windows were soon being made here from imported glass.[3] In the 1890s a number of local artists began to design and make stained and painted glass windows, competing with the imports commissioned from British studios.[4] Decorative glass for the home became more and more popular, but painting and staining were expensive, and after about 1905 coloured glass was largely used instead. Before long, domestic stained glass windows had become mass-produced items, chosen from a pattern-book; after the Second World War they were no longer in demand, and although commissions for ecclesiastical windows continued to be executed in Aotearoa, "the art of making domestic stained glass windows died".[5]

In the meantime, some of New Zealand's demands for glass items such as drinking vessels, bottles, jars and lamps, were being met by local glassworks such as the Union Street Glassworks, or the Australian Glass Manufacturers' Company and its subsidiary, Crown Crystal Glass (1950-1987); scientific glassblowing and neon tube bending were also added to the industry mix.[6] These enterprises all depended on workers who were skilled at glassblowing and other 'hot glass' techniques, but until the 1960s the skills and technology embedded in the glass manufacturing industry were more or less restricted to a factory setting.[7]

Into the studio

During the 1960s, changes in technology developed in the United States made it possible to work with hot glass in the studio, and interest in studio glassmaking began to spread internationally. By the end of the decade, glass was beginning to appear on the New Zealand studio craft scene, and during the 1970s more and more craftspeople joined the field, some bringing significant expertise in glassblowing from industry experience or overseas training.[8] By 1983 James Mack, the Director of the Dowse Art Museum, was able to write that "The glass movement is alive and well … We are blessed with a small but growing band of aesthetic masochists who are prepared to stand for many hours a day in front of furnaces raging at temperatures around 1200° Celsius to provide an awakening audience with access to a mysterious and magical material".[9]

As this suggests, techniques such as glassblowing and flameworking contributed a crucial impetus to the new movement; but practitioners have explored many different ways of working with glass. An important aspect during the 1970s and 1980s was a revived interest in stained glass, to which artists brought a contemporary vitality, creating screens and autonomous panels as well as glass for use in architectural contexts.[10] Innovative approaches to casting and other kiln-formed or 'warm glass' processes have been developed, and the lost wax technique successfully pioneered by Ann Robinson in the 1980s and 1990s has become a distinctive feature of New Zealand glass.

'Cold glass' work has included lamination, leadlighting, etching, carving and sandblasting, and hot, warm and cold processes and techniques are often combined. For example, a stained glass screen exhibited by Rena Jarosewitsch in 1989 included "4 individual stained glass panes, made of hand blown and variegated Antique glass, individual parts sandblasted and acid polished, painted and fired, leaded, in aluminium frame with black powder coated finish".[11]

Fluid Glass

The amorphous properties of glass create exacting technical demands, but provide as compelling a reason to work with this material as its visual properties of light and colour. Its shape-shifting ability to change from solid to liquid and back again can be harnessed to create a seemingly infinite range of forms, also allowing the artist to add elements incrementally and to draw on the effects of different techniques and processes in combination.

The fluid properties of glass also make possible the technique of enameling, in which finely ground glass is heated and fused to metal. Built up in thin layers over multiple firings, enamel can be applied in a painterly fashion, used subtly as an inlay or boldly as a lustrous surface; it may be opaque or translucent, and can even be suspended in an open framework of metal, allowing light to shine through.

These days, glass in Aotearoa is more fluid than ever before, as studio practitioners use a range of techniques to create anything from sculptural objects to light fittings, working on their own, in collaborative studios, or in partnership with architects, designers and fine artists.

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Header image:  Kota (scraper), obsidian. c. 1250-1800; New Zealand. © All Rights Reserved. Te Papa ID ME006872.