Experiments in Fragility: Two Temple Place's celebration of glass
The gallery's latest exhibition explores the last 170 of experimentation in the medium of glassworks...
By
Susan Gray
February 7, 2024
The Glass Heart takes an everyday material and shows what it can become in the hands of artists and craftspeople. The transformative and dynamic power of the glassmaking process, where the raw base materials of silica, soda, potash and lime are exposed to extreme heat to be shaped into a myriad of forms, begins the show. We learn how solid form’s mesmerising emergence from a molten state is held in balance by the maker’s hands, tools, and in the case of mouth-blown glass, human breath. Uniting both traditional stained glass and studio glass forms, the ancient process of glass blowing reaches back 2000 years. In glass invisible breath is made visible through variations in the material.
Peter Layton’s Battery – Matters of the Heart (2004) was created as an expression of the human condition: glowing, translucent, jewel-like, red, yellow and green hearts are contained in a compartmentalised wire box. Irregularly shaped and reflecting the human organ, rather than symbolic love hearts, the mouth-blown glass hearts glow with life. Layton says that Matters of the Heart captures the idea that ‘between birth and death there are only precious present moments encompassing love, joy, strength, courage, wisdom, humour, generosity, creativity, freedom – and of course their opposites’.
Watercolours, lithographs and daguerreotypes of the Crystal Palace built in 1851 for the Great Exhibition, the first of the World Fairs, illustrate the historic moment when new industrial techniques made decorative glass a widely available product. Six years earlier the Glass Excise Tax had been repealed, making glass more affordable. Curator Antonia Harrison describes the Crystal Palace as the ‘bedrock of the exhibition’ - it was the first gallery in the world to show stained glass. At its centre was a 27-foot glass fountain, showcasing the potential of the material to be beautiful, functional and spectacular.
The Arts and Crafts movement was stained glass’s moment, with its practitioners mixing window creation with large, beautiful cartoons for their designs. Edward Burne-Jones’ 1865 work Musician Angel (playing aulos) shows an ash blond angel, framed by feathered wings, the same colour as its hair, but with quill tips highlighted in yellow, wearing a scarlet cloak and light green gathered robe. Contained within a rose window shape, the angel’s head fills the top light, framed by a halo and downy wing bones, while the two wings extend to the side light, with the torso covering the centre and an elemental sea of light blue and navy forming the base two lights. The Angel is one of Burne-Jones’ earliest designs and shows how successfully he combined colour and form within an architectural framework. Nearby, William Morris’ The Angel of the Annunciation (1849-1896) and The Virgin of the Annunciation (1869-62), in black and grey washes over graphite, show the iconographic power of glass in black and white. The designs also reveal Morris’ skill in combining figures and detailed flora and fauna, where the drawing of the leaded lines is integrated into strong compositional elements, illustrated by the trellis behind the Virgin and the angel.
At the end of the nineteenth century father and daughter artists Christopher and Veronica Whall brought a modernity and sculptural quality to religious stained glass. Whall taught himself glassmaking so he could control every aspect of the process, and adopted slab glass in 1889. Slab glass’ deliberately uneven texture and sculptural qualities can be seen in Dove (1906), a seven light window originally for St Mark’s, Birkenhead. Sitting on a thick horizontal lead, as if on a perch, the dove is surrounded by colours and shapes reflecting its plumage, and outline while in flight. Whall took full advantage of the lead between the glass, using it to delineate form and as a means of expression and pattern. A 1930s cartoon of Sir Galahad, a stained glass design for King Arthur’s Hall, Tintagel, is the only example of Veronica Whall’s luminous colour combinations, bold design and painterly techniques. With his scale-like armour, plaited belt and tasselled tunic the knight takes on an amphibian quality, echoing the background foliage.
Two Temple Place’s Great Hall upper gallery is framed at the east and west end by huge pictorial windows by Clayton and Bell known as Sunrise and Sunset (1895), which chart the course of light throughout the day through a segmented tableau of mountain scenes. In The Soil (2023), Pinkie Maclure uses stained glass in a similar grid structure to challenge expectations of the material. A female figure in a beatific pose, wearing lime green wellingtons occupies the top central frame, below her a layer of black glass, and then fantastically shaped and coloured flowers bloom and writhe, highlighting climate change. World Without Beginning (2018) by Brian Clark highlights glass’ architectural qualities, with folding panels of dark green glass encased in dark wood screen like a traditional room divider, the swirly painterly effect and bubbles of human breath reminiscent of a primordial soup. The multi-hued, wire-wrapped amorphic shapes of Chris Day’s Judge and Jury (2023), reflect on the artist’s own mixed-race heritage and his research into the treatment of Black people in the USA and Britain. Day says he is ‘using art to help overcome the traumas that haunt our collective past’. Glassmaking’s fragility gives artists the briefest moment to shape their lasting message, whether personal, spiritual or environmental.
The Glass Heart: Art, Industry & Collaboration is showing at Two Temple Place until 21st April.
The Glass Heart takes an everyday material and shows what it can become in the hands of artists and craftspeople. The transformative and dynamic power of the glassmaking process, where the raw base materials of silica, soda, potash and lime are exposed to extreme heat to be shaped into a myriad of forms, begins the show. We learn how solid form’s mesmerising emergence from a molten state is held in balance by the maker’s hands, tools, and in the case of mouth-blown glass, human breath. Uniting both traditional stained glass and studio glass forms, the ancient process of glass blowing reaches back 2000 years. In glass invisible breath is made visible through variations in the material.
Peter Layton’s Battery – Matters of the Heart (2004) was created as an expression of the human condition: glowing, translucent, jewel-like, red, yellow and green hearts are contained in a compartmentalised wire box. Irregularly shaped and reflecting the human organ, rather than symbolic love hearts, the mouth-blown glass hearts glow with life. Layton says that Matters of the Heart captures the idea that ‘between birth and death there are only precious present moments encompassing love, joy, strength, courage, wisdom, humour, generosity, creativity, freedom – and of course their opposites’.
Watercolours, lithographs and daguerreotypes of the Crystal Palace built in 1851 for the Great Exhibition, the first of the World Fairs, illustrate the historic moment when new industrial techniques made decorative glass a widely available product. Six years earlier the Glass Excise Tax had been repealed, making glass more affordable. Curator Antonia Harrison describes the Crystal Palace as the ‘bedrock of the exhibition’ - it was the first gallery in the world to show stained glass. At its centre was a 27-foot glass fountain, showcasing the potential of the material to be beautiful, functional and spectacular.
The Arts and Crafts movement was stained glass’s moment, with its practitioners mixing window creation with large, beautiful cartoons for their designs. Edward Burne-Jones’ 1865 work Musician Angel (playing aulos) shows an ash blond angel, framed by feathered wings, the same colour as its hair, but with quill tips highlighted in yellow, wearing a scarlet cloak and light green gathered robe. Contained within a rose window shape, the angel’s head fills the top light, framed by a halo and downy wing bones, while the two wings extend to the side light, with the torso covering the centre and an elemental sea of light blue and navy forming the base two lights. The Angel is one of Burne-Jones’ earliest designs and shows how successfully he combined colour and form within an architectural framework. Nearby, William Morris’ The Angel of the Annunciation (1849-1896) and The Virgin of the Annunciation (1869-62), in black and grey washes over graphite, show the iconographic power of glass in black and white. The designs also reveal Morris’ skill in combining figures and detailed flora and fauna, where the drawing of the leaded lines is integrated into strong compositional elements, illustrated by the trellis behind the Virgin and the angel.
At the end of the nineteenth century father and daughter artists Christopher and Veronica Whall brought a modernity and sculptural quality to religious stained glass. Whall taught himself glassmaking so he could control every aspect of the process, and adopted slab glass in 1889. Slab glass’ deliberately uneven texture and sculptural qualities can be seen in Dove (1906), a seven light window originally for St Mark’s, Birkenhead. Sitting on a thick horizontal lead, as if on a perch, the dove is surrounded by colours and shapes reflecting its plumage, and outline while in flight. Whall took full advantage of the lead between the glass, using it to delineate form and as a means of expression and pattern. A 1930s cartoon of Sir Galahad, a stained glass design for King Arthur’s Hall, Tintagel, is the only example of Veronica Whall’s luminous colour combinations, bold design and painterly techniques. With his scale-like armour, plaited belt and tasselled tunic the knight takes on an amphibian quality, echoing the background foliage.
Two Temple Place’s Great Hall upper gallery is framed at the east and west end by huge pictorial windows by Clayton and Bell known as Sunrise and Sunset (1895), which chart the course of light throughout the day through a segmented tableau of mountain scenes. In The Soil (2023), Pinkie Maclure uses stained glass in a similar grid structure to challenge expectations of the material. A female figure in a beatific pose, wearing lime green wellingtons occupies the top central frame, below her a layer of black glass, and then fantastically shaped and coloured flowers bloom and writhe, highlighting climate change. World Without Beginning (2018) by Brian Clark highlights glass’ architectural qualities, with folding panels of dark green glass encased in dark wood screen like a traditional room divider, the swirly painterly effect and bubbles of human breath reminiscent of a primordial soup. The multi-hued, wire-wrapped amorphic shapes of Chris Day’s Judge and Jury (2023), reflect on the artist’s own mixed-race heritage and his research into the treatment of Black people in the USA and Britain. Day says he is ‘using art to help overcome the traumas that haunt our collective past’. Glassmaking’s fragility gives artists the briefest moment to shape their lasting message, whether personal, spiritual or environmental.
The Glass Heart: Art, Industry & Collaboration is showing at Two Temple Place until 21st April.
The Glass Heart takes an everyday material and shows what it can become in the hands of artists and craftspeople. The transformative and dynamic power of the glassmaking process, where the raw base materials of silica, soda, potash and lime are exposed to extreme heat to be shaped into a myriad of forms, begins the show. We learn how solid form’s mesmerising emergence from a molten state is held in balance by the maker’s hands, tools, and in the case of mouth-blown glass, human breath. Uniting both traditional stained glass and studio glass forms, the ancient process of glass blowing reaches back 2000 years. In glass invisible breath is made visible through variations in the material.
Peter Layton’s Battery – Matters of the Heart (2004) was created as an expression of the human condition: glowing, translucent, jewel-like, red, yellow and green hearts are contained in a compartmentalised wire box. Irregularly shaped and reflecting the human organ, rather than symbolic love hearts, the mouth-blown glass hearts glow with life. Layton says that Matters of the Heart captures the idea that ‘between birth and death there are only precious present moments encompassing love, joy, strength, courage, wisdom, humour, generosity, creativity, freedom – and of course their opposites’.
Watercolours, lithographs and daguerreotypes of the Crystal Palace built in 1851 for the Great Exhibition, the first of the World Fairs, illustrate the historic moment when new industrial techniques made decorative glass a widely available product. Six years earlier the Glass Excise Tax had been repealed, making glass more affordable. Curator Antonia Harrison describes the Crystal Palace as the ‘bedrock of the exhibition’ - it was the first gallery in the world to show stained glass. At its centre was a 27-foot glass fountain, showcasing the potential of the material to be beautiful, functional and spectacular.
The Arts and Crafts movement was stained glass’s moment, with its practitioners mixing window creation with large, beautiful cartoons for their designs. Edward Burne-Jones’ 1865 work Musician Angel (playing aulos) shows an ash blond angel, framed by feathered wings, the same colour as its hair, but with quill tips highlighted in yellow, wearing a scarlet cloak and light green gathered robe. Contained within a rose window shape, the angel’s head fills the top light, framed by a halo and downy wing bones, while the two wings extend to the side light, with the torso covering the centre and an elemental sea of light blue and navy forming the base two lights. The Angel is one of Burne-Jones’ earliest designs and shows how successfully he combined colour and form within an architectural framework. Nearby, William Morris’ The Angel of the Annunciation (1849-1896) and The Virgin of the Annunciation (1869-62), in black and grey washes over graphite, show the iconographic power of glass in black and white. The designs also reveal Morris’ skill in combining figures and detailed flora and fauna, where the drawing of the leaded lines is integrated into strong compositional elements, illustrated by the trellis behind the Virgin and the angel.
At the end of the nineteenth century father and daughter artists Christopher and Veronica Whall brought a modernity and sculptural quality to religious stained glass. Whall taught himself glassmaking so he could control every aspect of the process, and adopted slab glass in 1889. Slab glass’ deliberately uneven texture and sculptural qualities can be seen in Dove (1906), a seven light window originally for St Mark’s, Birkenhead. Sitting on a thick horizontal lead, as if on a perch, the dove is surrounded by colours and shapes reflecting its plumage, and outline while in flight. Whall took full advantage of the lead between the glass, using it to delineate form and as a means of expression and pattern. A 1930s cartoon of Sir Galahad, a stained glass design for King Arthur’s Hall, Tintagel, is the only example of Veronica Whall’s luminous colour combinations, bold design and painterly techniques. With his scale-like armour, plaited belt and tasselled tunic the knight takes on an amphibian quality, echoing the background foliage.
Two Temple Place’s Great Hall upper gallery is framed at the east and west end by huge pictorial windows by Clayton and Bell known as Sunrise and Sunset (1895), which chart the course of light throughout the day through a segmented tableau of mountain scenes. In The Soil (2023), Pinkie Maclure uses stained glass in a similar grid structure to challenge expectations of the material. A female figure in a beatific pose, wearing lime green wellingtons occupies the top central frame, below her a layer of black glass, and then fantastically shaped and coloured flowers bloom and writhe, highlighting climate change. World Without Beginning (2018) by Brian Clark highlights glass’ architectural qualities, with folding panels of dark green glass encased in dark wood screen like a traditional room divider, the swirly painterly effect and bubbles of human breath reminiscent of a primordial soup. The multi-hued, wire-wrapped amorphic shapes of Chris Day’s Judge and Jury (2023), reflect on the artist’s own mixed-race heritage and his research into the treatment of Black people in the USA and Britain. Day says he is ‘using art to help overcome the traumas that haunt our collective past’. Glassmaking’s fragility gives artists the briefest moment to shape their lasting message, whether personal, spiritual or environmental.
The Glass Heart: Art, Industry & Collaboration is showing at Two Temple Place until 21st April.
The Glass Heart takes an everyday material and shows what it can become in the hands of artists and craftspeople. The transformative and dynamic power of the glassmaking process, where the raw base materials of silica, soda, potash and lime are exposed to extreme heat to be shaped into a myriad of forms, begins the show. We learn how solid form’s mesmerising emergence from a molten state is held in balance by the maker’s hands, tools, and in the case of mouth-blown glass, human breath. Uniting both traditional stained glass and studio glass forms, the ancient process of glass blowing reaches back 2000 years. In glass invisible breath is made visible through variations in the material.
Peter Layton’s Battery – Matters of the Heart (2004) was created as an expression of the human condition: glowing, translucent, jewel-like, red, yellow and green hearts are contained in a compartmentalised wire box. Irregularly shaped and reflecting the human organ, rather than symbolic love hearts, the mouth-blown glass hearts glow with life. Layton says that Matters of the Heart captures the idea that ‘between birth and death there are only precious present moments encompassing love, joy, strength, courage, wisdom, humour, generosity, creativity, freedom – and of course their opposites’.
Watercolours, lithographs and daguerreotypes of the Crystal Palace built in 1851 for the Great Exhibition, the first of the World Fairs, illustrate the historic moment when new industrial techniques made decorative glass a widely available product. Six years earlier the Glass Excise Tax had been repealed, making glass more affordable. Curator Antonia Harrison describes the Crystal Palace as the ‘bedrock of the exhibition’ - it was the first gallery in the world to show stained glass. At its centre was a 27-foot glass fountain, showcasing the potential of the material to be beautiful, functional and spectacular.
The Arts and Crafts movement was stained glass’s moment, with its practitioners mixing window creation with large, beautiful cartoons for their designs. Edward Burne-Jones’ 1865 work Musician Angel (playing aulos) shows an ash blond angel, framed by feathered wings, the same colour as its hair, but with quill tips highlighted in yellow, wearing a scarlet cloak and light green gathered robe. Contained within a rose window shape, the angel’s head fills the top light, framed by a halo and downy wing bones, while the two wings extend to the side light, with the torso covering the centre and an elemental sea of light blue and navy forming the base two lights. The Angel is one of Burne-Jones’ earliest designs and shows how successfully he combined colour and form within an architectural framework. Nearby, William Morris’ The Angel of the Annunciation (1849-1896) and The Virgin of the Annunciation (1869-62), in black and grey washes over graphite, show the iconographic power of glass in black and white. The designs also reveal Morris’ skill in combining figures and detailed flora and fauna, where the drawing of the leaded lines is integrated into strong compositional elements, illustrated by the trellis behind the Virgin and the angel.
At the end of the nineteenth century father and daughter artists Christopher and Veronica Whall brought a modernity and sculptural quality to religious stained glass. Whall taught himself glassmaking so he could control every aspect of the process, and adopted slab glass in 1889. Slab glass’ deliberately uneven texture and sculptural qualities can be seen in Dove (1906), a seven light window originally for St Mark’s, Birkenhead. Sitting on a thick horizontal lead, as if on a perch, the dove is surrounded by colours and shapes reflecting its plumage, and outline while in flight. Whall took full advantage of the lead between the glass, using it to delineate form and as a means of expression and pattern. A 1930s cartoon of Sir Galahad, a stained glass design for King Arthur’s Hall, Tintagel, is the only example of Veronica Whall’s luminous colour combinations, bold design and painterly techniques. With his scale-like armour, plaited belt and tasselled tunic the knight takes on an amphibian quality, echoing the background foliage.
Two Temple Place’s Great Hall upper gallery is framed at the east and west end by huge pictorial windows by Clayton and Bell known as Sunrise and Sunset (1895), which chart the course of light throughout the day through a segmented tableau of mountain scenes. In The Soil (2023), Pinkie Maclure uses stained glass in a similar grid structure to challenge expectations of the material. A female figure in a beatific pose, wearing lime green wellingtons occupies the top central frame, below her a layer of black glass, and then fantastically shaped and coloured flowers bloom and writhe, highlighting climate change. World Without Beginning (2018) by Brian Clark highlights glass’ architectural qualities, with folding panels of dark green glass encased in dark wood screen like a traditional room divider, the swirly painterly effect and bubbles of human breath reminiscent of a primordial soup. The multi-hued, wire-wrapped amorphic shapes of Chris Day’s Judge and Jury (2023), reflect on the artist’s own mixed-race heritage and his research into the treatment of Black people in the USA and Britain. Day says he is ‘using art to help overcome the traumas that haunt our collective past’. Glassmaking’s fragility gives artists the briefest moment to shape their lasting message, whether personal, spiritual or environmental.
The Glass Heart: Art, Industry & Collaboration is showing at Two Temple Place until 21st April.
The Glass Heart takes an everyday material and shows what it can become in the hands of artists and craftspeople. The transformative and dynamic power of the glassmaking process, where the raw base materials of silica, soda, potash and lime are exposed to extreme heat to be shaped into a myriad of forms, begins the show. We learn how solid form’s mesmerising emergence from a molten state is held in balance by the maker’s hands, tools, and in the case of mouth-blown glass, human breath. Uniting both traditional stained glass and studio glass forms, the ancient process of glass blowing reaches back 2000 years. In glass invisible breath is made visible through variations in the material.
Peter Layton’s Battery – Matters of the Heart (2004) was created as an expression of the human condition: glowing, translucent, jewel-like, red, yellow and green hearts are contained in a compartmentalised wire box. Irregularly shaped and reflecting the human organ, rather than symbolic love hearts, the mouth-blown glass hearts glow with life. Layton says that Matters of the Heart captures the idea that ‘between birth and death there are only precious present moments encompassing love, joy, strength, courage, wisdom, humour, generosity, creativity, freedom – and of course their opposites’.
Watercolours, lithographs and daguerreotypes of the Crystal Palace built in 1851 for the Great Exhibition, the first of the World Fairs, illustrate the historic moment when new industrial techniques made decorative glass a widely available product. Six years earlier the Glass Excise Tax had been repealed, making glass more affordable. Curator Antonia Harrison describes the Crystal Palace as the ‘bedrock of the exhibition’ - it was the first gallery in the world to show stained glass. At its centre was a 27-foot glass fountain, showcasing the potential of the material to be beautiful, functional and spectacular.
The Arts and Crafts movement was stained glass’s moment, with its practitioners mixing window creation with large, beautiful cartoons for their designs. Edward Burne-Jones’ 1865 work Musician Angel (playing aulos) shows an ash blond angel, framed by feathered wings, the same colour as its hair, but with quill tips highlighted in yellow, wearing a scarlet cloak and light green gathered robe. Contained within a rose window shape, the angel’s head fills the top light, framed by a halo and downy wing bones, while the two wings extend to the side light, with the torso covering the centre and an elemental sea of light blue and navy forming the base two lights. The Angel is one of Burne-Jones’ earliest designs and shows how successfully he combined colour and form within an architectural framework. Nearby, William Morris’ The Angel of the Annunciation (1849-1896) and The Virgin of the Annunciation (1869-62), in black and grey washes over graphite, show the iconographic power of glass in black and white. The designs also reveal Morris’ skill in combining figures and detailed flora and fauna, where the drawing of the leaded lines is integrated into strong compositional elements, illustrated by the trellis behind the Virgin and the angel.
At the end of the nineteenth century father and daughter artists Christopher and Veronica Whall brought a modernity and sculptural quality to religious stained glass. Whall taught himself glassmaking so he could control every aspect of the process, and adopted slab glass in 1889. Slab glass’ deliberately uneven texture and sculptural qualities can be seen in Dove (1906), a seven light window originally for St Mark’s, Birkenhead. Sitting on a thick horizontal lead, as if on a perch, the dove is surrounded by colours and shapes reflecting its plumage, and outline while in flight. Whall took full advantage of the lead between the glass, using it to delineate form and as a means of expression and pattern. A 1930s cartoon of Sir Galahad, a stained glass design for King Arthur’s Hall, Tintagel, is the only example of Veronica Whall’s luminous colour combinations, bold design and painterly techniques. With his scale-like armour, plaited belt and tasselled tunic the knight takes on an amphibian quality, echoing the background foliage.
Two Temple Place’s Great Hall upper gallery is framed at the east and west end by huge pictorial windows by Clayton and Bell known as Sunrise and Sunset (1895), which chart the course of light throughout the day through a segmented tableau of mountain scenes. In The Soil (2023), Pinkie Maclure uses stained glass in a similar grid structure to challenge expectations of the material. A female figure in a beatific pose, wearing lime green wellingtons occupies the top central frame, below her a layer of black glass, and then fantastically shaped and coloured flowers bloom and writhe, highlighting climate change. World Without Beginning (2018) by Brian Clark highlights glass’ architectural qualities, with folding panels of dark green glass encased in dark wood screen like a traditional room divider, the swirly painterly effect and bubbles of human breath reminiscent of a primordial soup. The multi-hued, wire-wrapped amorphic shapes of Chris Day’s Judge and Jury (2023), reflect on the artist’s own mixed-race heritage and his research into the treatment of Black people in the USA and Britain. Day says he is ‘using art to help overcome the traumas that haunt our collective past’. Glassmaking’s fragility gives artists the briefest moment to shape their lasting message, whether personal, spiritual or environmental.
The Glass Heart: Art, Industry & Collaboration is showing at Two Temple Place until 21st April.
The Glass Heart takes an everyday material and shows what it can become in the hands of artists and craftspeople. The transformative and dynamic power of the glassmaking process, where the raw base materials of silica, soda, potash and lime are exposed to extreme heat to be shaped into a myriad of forms, begins the show. We learn how solid form’s mesmerising emergence from a molten state is held in balance by the maker’s hands, tools, and in the case of mouth-blown glass, human breath. Uniting both traditional stained glass and studio glass forms, the ancient process of glass blowing reaches back 2000 years. In glass invisible breath is made visible through variations in the material.
Peter Layton’s Battery – Matters of the Heart (2004) was created as an expression of the human condition: glowing, translucent, jewel-like, red, yellow and green hearts are contained in a compartmentalised wire box. Irregularly shaped and reflecting the human organ, rather than symbolic love hearts, the mouth-blown glass hearts glow with life. Layton says that Matters of the Heart captures the idea that ‘between birth and death there are only precious present moments encompassing love, joy, strength, courage, wisdom, humour, generosity, creativity, freedom – and of course their opposites’.
Watercolours, lithographs and daguerreotypes of the Crystal Palace built in 1851 for the Great Exhibition, the first of the World Fairs, illustrate the historic moment when new industrial techniques made decorative glass a widely available product. Six years earlier the Glass Excise Tax had been repealed, making glass more affordable. Curator Antonia Harrison describes the Crystal Palace as the ‘bedrock of the exhibition’ - it was the first gallery in the world to show stained glass. At its centre was a 27-foot glass fountain, showcasing the potential of the material to be beautiful, functional and spectacular.
The Arts and Crafts movement was stained glass’s moment, with its practitioners mixing window creation with large, beautiful cartoons for their designs. Edward Burne-Jones’ 1865 work Musician Angel (playing aulos) shows an ash blond angel, framed by feathered wings, the same colour as its hair, but with quill tips highlighted in yellow, wearing a scarlet cloak and light green gathered robe. Contained within a rose window shape, the angel’s head fills the top light, framed by a halo and downy wing bones, while the two wings extend to the side light, with the torso covering the centre and an elemental sea of light blue and navy forming the base two lights. The Angel is one of Burne-Jones’ earliest designs and shows how successfully he combined colour and form within an architectural framework. Nearby, William Morris’ The Angel of the Annunciation (1849-1896) and The Virgin of the Annunciation (1869-62), in black and grey washes over graphite, show the iconographic power of glass in black and white. The designs also reveal Morris’ skill in combining figures and detailed flora and fauna, where the drawing of the leaded lines is integrated into strong compositional elements, illustrated by the trellis behind the Virgin and the angel.
At the end of the nineteenth century father and daughter artists Christopher and Veronica Whall brought a modernity and sculptural quality to religious stained glass. Whall taught himself glassmaking so he could control every aspect of the process, and adopted slab glass in 1889. Slab glass’ deliberately uneven texture and sculptural qualities can be seen in Dove (1906), a seven light window originally for St Mark’s, Birkenhead. Sitting on a thick horizontal lead, as if on a perch, the dove is surrounded by colours and shapes reflecting its plumage, and outline while in flight. Whall took full advantage of the lead between the glass, using it to delineate form and as a means of expression and pattern. A 1930s cartoon of Sir Galahad, a stained glass design for King Arthur’s Hall, Tintagel, is the only example of Veronica Whall’s luminous colour combinations, bold design and painterly techniques. With his scale-like armour, plaited belt and tasselled tunic the knight takes on an amphibian quality, echoing the background foliage.
Two Temple Place’s Great Hall upper gallery is framed at the east and west end by huge pictorial windows by Clayton and Bell known as Sunrise and Sunset (1895), which chart the course of light throughout the day through a segmented tableau of mountain scenes. In The Soil (2023), Pinkie Maclure uses stained glass in a similar grid structure to challenge expectations of the material. A female figure in a beatific pose, wearing lime green wellingtons occupies the top central frame, below her a layer of black glass, and then fantastically shaped and coloured flowers bloom and writhe, highlighting climate change. World Without Beginning (2018) by Brian Clark highlights glass’ architectural qualities, with folding panels of dark green glass encased in dark wood screen like a traditional room divider, the swirly painterly effect and bubbles of human breath reminiscent of a primordial soup. The multi-hued, wire-wrapped amorphic shapes of Chris Day’s Judge and Jury (2023), reflect on the artist’s own mixed-race heritage and his research into the treatment of Black people in the USA and Britain. Day says he is ‘using art to help overcome the traumas that haunt our collective past’. Glassmaking’s fragility gives artists the briefest moment to shape their lasting message, whether personal, spiritual or environmental.
The Glass Heart: Art, Industry & Collaboration is showing at Two Temple Place until 21st April.
The Glass Heart takes an everyday material and shows what it can become in the hands of artists and craftspeople. The transformative and dynamic power of the glassmaking process, where the raw base materials of silica, soda, potash and lime are exposed to extreme heat to be shaped into a myriad of forms, begins the show. We learn how solid form’s mesmerising emergence from a molten state is held in balance by the maker’s hands, tools, and in the case of mouth-blown glass, human breath. Uniting both traditional stained glass and studio glass forms, the ancient process of glass blowing reaches back 2000 years. In glass invisible breath is made visible through variations in the material.
Peter Layton’s Battery – Matters of the Heart (2004) was created as an expression of the human condition: glowing, translucent, jewel-like, red, yellow and green hearts are contained in a compartmentalised wire box. Irregularly shaped and reflecting the human organ, rather than symbolic love hearts, the mouth-blown glass hearts glow with life. Layton says that Matters of the Heart captures the idea that ‘between birth and death there are only precious present moments encompassing love, joy, strength, courage, wisdom, humour, generosity, creativity, freedom – and of course their opposites’.
Watercolours, lithographs and daguerreotypes of the Crystal Palace built in 1851 for the Great Exhibition, the first of the World Fairs, illustrate the historic moment when new industrial techniques made decorative glass a widely available product. Six years earlier the Glass Excise Tax had been repealed, making glass more affordable. Curator Antonia Harrison describes the Crystal Palace as the ‘bedrock of the exhibition’ - it was the first gallery in the world to show stained glass. At its centre was a 27-foot glass fountain, showcasing the potential of the material to be beautiful, functional and spectacular.
The Arts and Crafts movement was stained glass’s moment, with its practitioners mixing window creation with large, beautiful cartoons for their designs. Edward Burne-Jones’ 1865 work Musician Angel (playing aulos) shows an ash blond angel, framed by feathered wings, the same colour as its hair, but with quill tips highlighted in yellow, wearing a scarlet cloak and light green gathered robe. Contained within a rose window shape, the angel’s head fills the top light, framed by a halo and downy wing bones, while the two wings extend to the side light, with the torso covering the centre and an elemental sea of light blue and navy forming the base two lights. The Angel is one of Burne-Jones’ earliest designs and shows how successfully he combined colour and form within an architectural framework. Nearby, William Morris’ The Angel of the Annunciation (1849-1896) and The Virgin of the Annunciation (1869-62), in black and grey washes over graphite, show the iconographic power of glass in black and white. The designs also reveal Morris’ skill in combining figures and detailed flora and fauna, where the drawing of the leaded lines is integrated into strong compositional elements, illustrated by the trellis behind the Virgin and the angel.
At the end of the nineteenth century father and daughter artists Christopher and Veronica Whall brought a modernity and sculptural quality to religious stained glass. Whall taught himself glassmaking so he could control every aspect of the process, and adopted slab glass in 1889. Slab glass’ deliberately uneven texture and sculptural qualities can be seen in Dove (1906), a seven light window originally for St Mark’s, Birkenhead. Sitting on a thick horizontal lead, as if on a perch, the dove is surrounded by colours and shapes reflecting its plumage, and outline while in flight. Whall took full advantage of the lead between the glass, using it to delineate form and as a means of expression and pattern. A 1930s cartoon of Sir Galahad, a stained glass design for King Arthur’s Hall, Tintagel, is the only example of Veronica Whall’s luminous colour combinations, bold design and painterly techniques. With his scale-like armour, plaited belt and tasselled tunic the knight takes on an amphibian quality, echoing the background foliage.
Two Temple Place’s Great Hall upper gallery is framed at the east and west end by huge pictorial windows by Clayton and Bell known as Sunrise and Sunset (1895), which chart the course of light throughout the day through a segmented tableau of mountain scenes. In The Soil (2023), Pinkie Maclure uses stained glass in a similar grid structure to challenge expectations of the material. A female figure in a beatific pose, wearing lime green wellingtons occupies the top central frame, below her a layer of black glass, and then fantastically shaped and coloured flowers bloom and writhe, highlighting climate change. World Without Beginning (2018) by Brian Clark highlights glass’ architectural qualities, with folding panels of dark green glass encased in dark wood screen like a traditional room divider, the swirly painterly effect and bubbles of human breath reminiscent of a primordial soup. The multi-hued, wire-wrapped amorphic shapes of Chris Day’s Judge and Jury (2023), reflect on the artist’s own mixed-race heritage and his research into the treatment of Black people in the USA and Britain. Day says he is ‘using art to help overcome the traumas that haunt our collective past’. Glassmaking’s fragility gives artists the briefest moment to shape their lasting message, whether personal, spiritual or environmental.
The Glass Heart: Art, Industry & Collaboration is showing at Two Temple Place until 21st April.
The Glass Heart takes an everyday material and shows what it can become in the hands of artists and craftspeople. The transformative and dynamic power of the glassmaking process, where the raw base materials of silica, soda, potash and lime are exposed to extreme heat to be shaped into a myriad of forms, begins the show. We learn how solid form’s mesmerising emergence from a molten state is held in balance by the maker’s hands, tools, and in the case of mouth-blown glass, human breath. Uniting both traditional stained glass and studio glass forms, the ancient process of glass blowing reaches back 2000 years. In glass invisible breath is made visible through variations in the material.
Peter Layton’s Battery – Matters of the Heart (2004) was created as an expression of the human condition: glowing, translucent, jewel-like, red, yellow and green hearts are contained in a compartmentalised wire box. Irregularly shaped and reflecting the human organ, rather than symbolic love hearts, the mouth-blown glass hearts glow with life. Layton says that Matters of the Heart captures the idea that ‘between birth and death there are only precious present moments encompassing love, joy, strength, courage, wisdom, humour, generosity, creativity, freedom – and of course their opposites’.
Watercolours, lithographs and daguerreotypes of the Crystal Palace built in 1851 for the Great Exhibition, the first of the World Fairs, illustrate the historic moment when new industrial techniques made decorative glass a widely available product. Six years earlier the Glass Excise Tax had been repealed, making glass more affordable. Curator Antonia Harrison describes the Crystal Palace as the ‘bedrock of the exhibition’ - it was the first gallery in the world to show stained glass. At its centre was a 27-foot glass fountain, showcasing the potential of the material to be beautiful, functional and spectacular.
The Arts and Crafts movement was stained glass’s moment, with its practitioners mixing window creation with large, beautiful cartoons for their designs. Edward Burne-Jones’ 1865 work Musician Angel (playing aulos) shows an ash blond angel, framed by feathered wings, the same colour as its hair, but with quill tips highlighted in yellow, wearing a scarlet cloak and light green gathered robe. Contained within a rose window shape, the angel’s head fills the top light, framed by a halo and downy wing bones, while the two wings extend to the side light, with the torso covering the centre and an elemental sea of light blue and navy forming the base two lights. The Angel is one of Burne-Jones’ earliest designs and shows how successfully he combined colour and form within an architectural framework. Nearby, William Morris’ The Angel of the Annunciation (1849-1896) and The Virgin of the Annunciation (1869-62), in black and grey washes over graphite, show the iconographic power of glass in black and white. The designs also reveal Morris’ skill in combining figures and detailed flora and fauna, where the drawing of the leaded lines is integrated into strong compositional elements, illustrated by the trellis behind the Virgin and the angel.
At the end of the nineteenth century father and daughter artists Christopher and Veronica Whall brought a modernity and sculptural quality to religious stained glass. Whall taught himself glassmaking so he could control every aspect of the process, and adopted slab glass in 1889. Slab glass’ deliberately uneven texture and sculptural qualities can be seen in Dove (1906), a seven light window originally for St Mark’s, Birkenhead. Sitting on a thick horizontal lead, as if on a perch, the dove is surrounded by colours and shapes reflecting its plumage, and outline while in flight. Whall took full advantage of the lead between the glass, using it to delineate form and as a means of expression and pattern. A 1930s cartoon of Sir Galahad, a stained glass design for King Arthur’s Hall, Tintagel, is the only example of Veronica Whall’s luminous colour combinations, bold design and painterly techniques. With his scale-like armour, plaited belt and tasselled tunic the knight takes on an amphibian quality, echoing the background foliage.
Two Temple Place’s Great Hall upper gallery is framed at the east and west end by huge pictorial windows by Clayton and Bell known as Sunrise and Sunset (1895), which chart the course of light throughout the day through a segmented tableau of mountain scenes. In The Soil (2023), Pinkie Maclure uses stained glass in a similar grid structure to challenge expectations of the material. A female figure in a beatific pose, wearing lime green wellingtons occupies the top central frame, below her a layer of black glass, and then fantastically shaped and coloured flowers bloom and writhe, highlighting climate change. World Without Beginning (2018) by Brian Clark highlights glass’ architectural qualities, with folding panels of dark green glass encased in dark wood screen like a traditional room divider, the swirly painterly effect and bubbles of human breath reminiscent of a primordial soup. The multi-hued, wire-wrapped amorphic shapes of Chris Day’s Judge and Jury (2023), reflect on the artist’s own mixed-race heritage and his research into the treatment of Black people in the USA and Britain. Day says he is ‘using art to help overcome the traumas that haunt our collective past’. Glassmaking’s fragility gives artists the briefest moment to shape their lasting message, whether personal, spiritual or environmental.
The Glass Heart: Art, Industry & Collaboration is showing at Two Temple Place until 21st April.
The Glass Heart takes an everyday material and shows what it can become in the hands of artists and craftspeople. The transformative and dynamic power of the glassmaking process, where the raw base materials of silica, soda, potash and lime are exposed to extreme heat to be shaped into a myriad of forms, begins the show. We learn how solid form’s mesmerising emergence from a molten state is held in balance by the maker’s hands, tools, and in the case of mouth-blown glass, human breath. Uniting both traditional stained glass and studio glass forms, the ancient process of glass blowing reaches back 2000 years. In glass invisible breath is made visible through variations in the material.
Peter Layton’s Battery – Matters of the Heart (2004) was created as an expression of the human condition: glowing, translucent, jewel-like, red, yellow and green hearts are contained in a compartmentalised wire box. Irregularly shaped and reflecting the human organ, rather than symbolic love hearts, the mouth-blown glass hearts glow with life. Layton says that Matters of the Heart captures the idea that ‘between birth and death there are only precious present moments encompassing love, joy, strength, courage, wisdom, humour, generosity, creativity, freedom – and of course their opposites’.
Watercolours, lithographs and daguerreotypes of the Crystal Palace built in 1851 for the Great Exhibition, the first of the World Fairs, illustrate the historic moment when new industrial techniques made decorative glass a widely available product. Six years earlier the Glass Excise Tax had been repealed, making glass more affordable. Curator Antonia Harrison describes the Crystal Palace as the ‘bedrock of the exhibition’ - it was the first gallery in the world to show stained glass. At its centre was a 27-foot glass fountain, showcasing the potential of the material to be beautiful, functional and spectacular.
The Arts and Crafts movement was stained glass’s moment, with its practitioners mixing window creation with large, beautiful cartoons for their designs. Edward Burne-Jones’ 1865 work Musician Angel (playing aulos) shows an ash blond angel, framed by feathered wings, the same colour as its hair, but with quill tips highlighted in yellow, wearing a scarlet cloak and light green gathered robe. Contained within a rose window shape, the angel’s head fills the top light, framed by a halo and downy wing bones, while the two wings extend to the side light, with the torso covering the centre and an elemental sea of light blue and navy forming the base two lights. The Angel is one of Burne-Jones’ earliest designs and shows how successfully he combined colour and form within an architectural framework. Nearby, William Morris’ The Angel of the Annunciation (1849-1896) and The Virgin of the Annunciation (1869-62), in black and grey washes over graphite, show the iconographic power of glass in black and white. The designs also reveal Morris’ skill in combining figures and detailed flora and fauna, where the drawing of the leaded lines is integrated into strong compositional elements, illustrated by the trellis behind the Virgin and the angel.
At the end of the nineteenth century father and daughter artists Christopher and Veronica Whall brought a modernity and sculptural quality to religious stained glass. Whall taught himself glassmaking so he could control every aspect of the process, and adopted slab glass in 1889. Slab glass’ deliberately uneven texture and sculptural qualities can be seen in Dove (1906), a seven light window originally for St Mark’s, Birkenhead. Sitting on a thick horizontal lead, as if on a perch, the dove is surrounded by colours and shapes reflecting its plumage, and outline while in flight. Whall took full advantage of the lead between the glass, using it to delineate form and as a means of expression and pattern. A 1930s cartoon of Sir Galahad, a stained glass design for King Arthur’s Hall, Tintagel, is the only example of Veronica Whall’s luminous colour combinations, bold design and painterly techniques. With his scale-like armour, plaited belt and tasselled tunic the knight takes on an amphibian quality, echoing the background foliage.
Two Temple Place’s Great Hall upper gallery is framed at the east and west end by huge pictorial windows by Clayton and Bell known as Sunrise and Sunset (1895), which chart the course of light throughout the day through a segmented tableau of mountain scenes. In The Soil (2023), Pinkie Maclure uses stained glass in a similar grid structure to challenge expectations of the material. A female figure in a beatific pose, wearing lime green wellingtons occupies the top central frame, below her a layer of black glass, and then fantastically shaped and coloured flowers bloom and writhe, highlighting climate change. World Without Beginning (2018) by Brian Clark highlights glass’ architectural qualities, with folding panels of dark green glass encased in dark wood screen like a traditional room divider, the swirly painterly effect and bubbles of human breath reminiscent of a primordial soup. The multi-hued, wire-wrapped amorphic shapes of Chris Day’s Judge and Jury (2023), reflect on the artist’s own mixed-race heritage and his research into the treatment of Black people in the USA and Britain. Day says he is ‘using art to help overcome the traumas that haunt our collective past’. Glassmaking’s fragility gives artists the briefest moment to shape their lasting message, whether personal, spiritual or environmental.
The Glass Heart: Art, Industry & Collaboration is showing at Two Temple Place until 21st April.
The Glass Heart takes an everyday material and shows what it can become in the hands of artists and craftspeople. The transformative and dynamic power of the glassmaking process, where the raw base materials of silica, soda, potash and lime are exposed to extreme heat to be shaped into a myriad of forms, begins the show. We learn how solid form’s mesmerising emergence from a molten state is held in balance by the maker’s hands, tools, and in the case of mouth-blown glass, human breath. Uniting both traditional stained glass and studio glass forms, the ancient process of glass blowing reaches back 2000 years. In glass invisible breath is made visible through variations in the material.
Peter Layton’s Battery – Matters of the Heart (2004) was created as an expression of the human condition: glowing, translucent, jewel-like, red, yellow and green hearts are contained in a compartmentalised wire box. Irregularly shaped and reflecting the human organ, rather than symbolic love hearts, the mouth-blown glass hearts glow with life. Layton says that Matters of the Heart captures the idea that ‘between birth and death there are only precious present moments encompassing love, joy, strength, courage, wisdom, humour, generosity, creativity, freedom – and of course their opposites’.
Watercolours, lithographs and daguerreotypes of the Crystal Palace built in 1851 for the Great Exhibition, the first of the World Fairs, illustrate the historic moment when new industrial techniques made decorative glass a widely available product. Six years earlier the Glass Excise Tax had been repealed, making glass more affordable. Curator Antonia Harrison describes the Crystal Palace as the ‘bedrock of the exhibition’ - it was the first gallery in the world to show stained glass. At its centre was a 27-foot glass fountain, showcasing the potential of the material to be beautiful, functional and spectacular.
The Arts and Crafts movement was stained glass’s moment, with its practitioners mixing window creation with large, beautiful cartoons for their designs. Edward Burne-Jones’ 1865 work Musician Angel (playing aulos) shows an ash blond angel, framed by feathered wings, the same colour as its hair, but with quill tips highlighted in yellow, wearing a scarlet cloak and light green gathered robe. Contained within a rose window shape, the angel’s head fills the top light, framed by a halo and downy wing bones, while the two wings extend to the side light, with the torso covering the centre and an elemental sea of light blue and navy forming the base two lights. The Angel is one of Burne-Jones’ earliest designs and shows how successfully he combined colour and form within an architectural framework. Nearby, William Morris’ The Angel of the Annunciation (1849-1896) and The Virgin of the Annunciation (1869-62), in black and grey washes over graphite, show the iconographic power of glass in black and white. The designs also reveal Morris’ skill in combining figures and detailed flora and fauna, where the drawing of the leaded lines is integrated into strong compositional elements, illustrated by the trellis behind the Virgin and the angel.
At the end of the nineteenth century father and daughter artists Christopher and Veronica Whall brought a modernity and sculptural quality to religious stained glass. Whall taught himself glassmaking so he could control every aspect of the process, and adopted slab glass in 1889. Slab glass’ deliberately uneven texture and sculptural qualities can be seen in Dove (1906), a seven light window originally for St Mark’s, Birkenhead. Sitting on a thick horizontal lead, as if on a perch, the dove is surrounded by colours and shapes reflecting its plumage, and outline while in flight. Whall took full advantage of the lead between the glass, using it to delineate form and as a means of expression and pattern. A 1930s cartoon of Sir Galahad, a stained glass design for King Arthur’s Hall, Tintagel, is the only example of Veronica Whall’s luminous colour combinations, bold design and painterly techniques. With his scale-like armour, plaited belt and tasselled tunic the knight takes on an amphibian quality, echoing the background foliage.
Two Temple Place’s Great Hall upper gallery is framed at the east and west end by huge pictorial windows by Clayton and Bell known as Sunrise and Sunset (1895), which chart the course of light throughout the day through a segmented tableau of mountain scenes. In The Soil (2023), Pinkie Maclure uses stained glass in a similar grid structure to challenge expectations of the material. A female figure in a beatific pose, wearing lime green wellingtons occupies the top central frame, below her a layer of black glass, and then fantastically shaped and coloured flowers bloom and writhe, highlighting climate change. World Without Beginning (2018) by Brian Clark highlights glass’ architectural qualities, with folding panels of dark green glass encased in dark wood screen like a traditional room divider, the swirly painterly effect and bubbles of human breath reminiscent of a primordial soup. The multi-hued, wire-wrapped amorphic shapes of Chris Day’s Judge and Jury (2023), reflect on the artist’s own mixed-race heritage and his research into the treatment of Black people in the USA and Britain. Day says he is ‘using art to help overcome the traumas that haunt our collective past’. Glassmaking’s fragility gives artists the briefest moment to shape their lasting message, whether personal, spiritual or environmental.
The Glass Heart: Art, Industry & Collaboration is showing at Two Temple Place until 21st April.
The Glass Heart takes an everyday material and shows what it can become in the hands of artists and craftspeople. The transformative and dynamic power of the glassmaking process, where the raw base materials of silica, soda, potash and lime are exposed to extreme heat to be shaped into a myriad of forms, begins the show. We learn how solid form’s mesmerising emergence from a molten state is held in balance by the maker’s hands, tools, and in the case of mouth-blown glass, human breath. Uniting both traditional stained glass and studio glass forms, the ancient process of glass blowing reaches back 2000 years. In glass invisible breath is made visible through variations in the material.
Peter Layton’s Battery – Matters of the Heart (2004) was created as an expression of the human condition: glowing, translucent, jewel-like, red, yellow and green hearts are contained in a compartmentalised wire box. Irregularly shaped and reflecting the human organ, rather than symbolic love hearts, the mouth-blown glass hearts glow with life. Layton says that Matters of the Heart captures the idea that ‘between birth and death there are only precious present moments encompassing love, joy, strength, courage, wisdom, humour, generosity, creativity, freedom – and of course their opposites’.
Watercolours, lithographs and daguerreotypes of the Crystal Palace built in 1851 for the Great Exhibition, the first of the World Fairs, illustrate the historic moment when new industrial techniques made decorative glass a widely available product. Six years earlier the Glass Excise Tax had been repealed, making glass more affordable. Curator Antonia Harrison describes the Crystal Palace as the ‘bedrock of the exhibition’ - it was the first gallery in the world to show stained glass. At its centre was a 27-foot glass fountain, showcasing the potential of the material to be beautiful, functional and spectacular.
The Arts and Crafts movement was stained glass’s moment, with its practitioners mixing window creation with large, beautiful cartoons for their designs. Edward Burne-Jones’ 1865 work Musician Angel (playing aulos) shows an ash blond angel, framed by feathered wings, the same colour as its hair, but with quill tips highlighted in yellow, wearing a scarlet cloak and light green gathered robe. Contained within a rose window shape, the angel’s head fills the top light, framed by a halo and downy wing bones, while the two wings extend to the side light, with the torso covering the centre and an elemental sea of light blue and navy forming the base two lights. The Angel is one of Burne-Jones’ earliest designs and shows how successfully he combined colour and form within an architectural framework. Nearby, William Morris’ The Angel of the Annunciation (1849-1896) and The Virgin of the Annunciation (1869-62), in black and grey washes over graphite, show the iconographic power of glass in black and white. The designs also reveal Morris’ skill in combining figures and detailed flora and fauna, where the drawing of the leaded lines is integrated into strong compositional elements, illustrated by the trellis behind the Virgin and the angel.
At the end of the nineteenth century father and daughter artists Christopher and Veronica Whall brought a modernity and sculptural quality to religious stained glass. Whall taught himself glassmaking so he could control every aspect of the process, and adopted slab glass in 1889. Slab glass’ deliberately uneven texture and sculptural qualities can be seen in Dove (1906), a seven light window originally for St Mark’s, Birkenhead. Sitting on a thick horizontal lead, as if on a perch, the dove is surrounded by colours and shapes reflecting its plumage, and outline while in flight. Whall took full advantage of the lead between the glass, using it to delineate form and as a means of expression and pattern. A 1930s cartoon of Sir Galahad, a stained glass design for King Arthur’s Hall, Tintagel, is the only example of Veronica Whall’s luminous colour combinations, bold design and painterly techniques. With his scale-like armour, plaited belt and tasselled tunic the knight takes on an amphibian quality, echoing the background foliage.
Two Temple Place’s Great Hall upper gallery is framed at the east and west end by huge pictorial windows by Clayton and Bell known as Sunrise and Sunset (1895), which chart the course of light throughout the day through a segmented tableau of mountain scenes. In The Soil (2023), Pinkie Maclure uses stained glass in a similar grid structure to challenge expectations of the material. A female figure in a beatific pose, wearing lime green wellingtons occupies the top central frame, below her a layer of black glass, and then fantastically shaped and coloured flowers bloom and writhe, highlighting climate change. World Without Beginning (2018) by Brian Clark highlights glass’ architectural qualities, with folding panels of dark green glass encased in dark wood screen like a traditional room divider, the swirly painterly effect and bubbles of human breath reminiscent of a primordial soup. The multi-hued, wire-wrapped amorphic shapes of Chris Day’s Judge and Jury (2023), reflect on the artist’s own mixed-race heritage and his research into the treatment of Black people in the USA and Britain. Day says he is ‘using art to help overcome the traumas that haunt our collective past’. Glassmaking’s fragility gives artists the briefest moment to shape their lasting message, whether personal, spiritual or environmental.
The Glass Heart: Art, Industry & Collaboration is showing at Two Temple Place until 21st April.
