Petr Spatina spent his early life playing the accordion and the piano, before discovering a love for the glass harp. In 2010 he amazed viewers of an Austrian talent show with his self-developed 33-glass harp on which he plays music ranging from classical to pop.
Car-maker ŠKODA saw Spatina on the talent show and asked him to perform a piece of music for the ad that would introduce the new ŠKODA Superb. Watch and be amazed as Spatina plays the 597 crystal glasses that make up his Superb-shaped glass harp!
Each year since 2007, Belgian beer maker Duvel has released a set of collector-edition beer glasses. Usually Duvel invites internationally renown artists to design the collection, but this year the company has organised a competition which will allow anyone to submit a design.
The competition will run in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Designs must be uploaded to the special Duvel Studio site where you can find resources and more details about the competition. Everyone will have the chance to vote for their favourites through Duvel’s Facebook page. The twenty designs from each country which attract the most votes will be considered by the Duvel Collection jury.
From the most popular designers, the jury will select ten finalists to go to Paris for the judging and presentation of the prize. Of these finalists, just one design will be selected for inclusion in the 2012 collection.
Three designers from each country will be selected as second-place finalists. Each will receive 50 glasses featuring their own designs. Another ten designers from each country will receive third-prizes: six glasses featuring their own designs.
Fancy entering? You need to be quick. The competition began on 1 October and will close on 15 December 2011. Don’t forget to encourage the Friends of Glass to vote for your design by sharing it via our Facebook page!
The 55th Venice Biennale is in full swing and this year’s edition again features the highly popular Glasstress exhibition. Started at the 2009 Biennale, Glasstress brings together artists, architects and designers who want to creatively express their thoughts and ideas through glass.
One of the contributors this year is singer, producer and designer Pharrell Williams who has created these amazing glass skeletons. Titled Inside Out, inspiration for the works came from Williams’ good friend Dr Ramachadrian of the University of California, San Diego who said: “Apes reach for fruit while man reaches for the stars.” As Williams explains: “I wanted to take on the more difficult challenge: how?”
Williams reached back to his childhood obsession with angels (“Seemingly human with wings”) to answer the question.
A meeting with Venice Projects, one of the finest glass blowing workshops in Murano, led to the creation of the angels. “It was important for it to represent what the inside body of an angel (Greek for the word messenger) looked like,” explains Williams. “The blowers captured exactly how I saw these angels in my mind. I am beyond pleased and impressed with the results.” Two sculptures were created. One is life size while the other is 45 cm in height.
The angels are on display at the Berengo Centre for Contemporary Art and Glass in Murano until 27 November 2011.
Carol Milne is a glass artist, and a knitter, who is based in Seattle, USA. Until recently, the idea of combining her two artistic passions had never occurred to her. Inspiration came when Milne noticed some strands of sprue wax lying around her studio. To Milne, the wax strands seemed to be an ideal material to knit with and she began to experiment.
The results are amazing one-off knitted glass pieces. In an article in Fiberarts® magazine, Milne explains the process involved in building each piece. She also discusses her artistic motivation: “These are beautiful objects, but they are also metaphors. They speak to the fragility of life and to the tendency to judge based on appearance versus practicality. Perhaps most importantly, I see my knitted work as a metaphor for social structure. Individual strands are weak and brittle on their own but deceptively strong when bound together.”
Dominic Wilcox is a British artist who is on a mission to reveal the hidden surprises that can be found in the everyday things that surround us. His latest work is a series of miniature watch sculptures which portray simple moments in time.
Wilcox has created tiny figures which are attached to the second and hour hands of vintage watches. The entire scene is encapsulated in a glass dome. Each dome was custom-made by Wearside Glass Sculptures at the UK’s National Glass Centre in Sunderland. “I spent time thinking about the relationship between the two people, how one passes another repeatedly and I tried to think about when that situation happens in real life or in an imagined scenario,” explains Wilcox on his website.
The seven scenes he has created range from two children playing hide-and-seek, to a looter stealing a television set during the recent London riots. The sculptures are being exhibited at Dezeen Space in London until 16 October 2011, but you can also enjoy them via the intriguing video that Wilcox has created:
Which one is your favourite? Why not let us know via our Facebook page.
In Australia, Fathers Day falls on the first Sunday in September. This year the Novak Agency, a real estate broker in the northern Sydney suburb of Dee Why, set aside 12 shop windows where people could leave messages of love for their fathers. So reported the Manly Daily.
Each glass window was backed with white paper and fluorescent markers were attached to the front. Within hours, three of the windows were filled with messages of love for fathers in a range of languages. People even took photos of their messages to create special Fathers Day cards for their dads.
Would you write a message on a window for your dad and what would it be? Why not use the Friends of Glass Facebook page as your window to the world?
Jeff Scanlan is a magician by trade. But after reading about the great Harry Eng’ Impossible Bottles in 1996, Scanlan became fascinated. Eng was renown for his ability to insert large and unusual objects into ordinary glass bottles. Scanlan spent three years studying Eng’s methods and, in his words: “Breaking bottles and ruining many decks of cards.”
All the effort paid off and Scanlan is now creating his own range of Impossible Bottles. To date he has inserted trainers, tennis balls, and even an upside-down corkscrew in a bottle. The bottles are not heated, cooled, cut or formed around the object or manipulated in any way.
The results are quite astonishing and Scanlan’s creations are now commanding high prices. We’re not quite sure we’d have the patience to do this ourselves, but a Scanlan original would certainly be a conversation-piece in the Friends of Glass offices!
Over the summer we hope many of you have been gathering sea glass as you stroll along the beach. But how to display your collection? While we might not all have the patience and skills of Alison Goyette (see our story on Boston Sea Glass) to turn them into jewellery, it is easy to create a sea-glass mobile as you can see in this video from Martha Stewart.
You just need sea glass, pieces of driftwood, cement glue and some fishing line. You can also include other objects such as stones or beads.
Wrap the string around the sea glass and tie into a double knot. Secure with a dab of cement glue. Continue until you have a string of the desired length and then attach to a piece of driftwood. You can add pieces of driftwood to create branches for the mobile or just runall the lengths of sea glass off one branch.
Hang your creation in front of a window to illuminate the glass and it will also tinkle beautifully in a breeze. Don’t forget to share your creations on the Friends of Glass Facebook page!
Beth at Unskinny Boppy Dreams has come up with this incredibly simple lantern for your outdoor seating area – perfect for summer entertaining. All you need is a frame (in Beth’s case an old ladder that she found at a market) and some old jars.
Hang the ladder in position, then attach the jars with wire. Add lengths of chain to the ladder so you can hang the jar lamps at different heights. Simply fill each jar with a little sand to keep the tealight candles stable, add your candle and light. Use citronella candles in some of the jars to keep the bugs at bay and you will be able to sit out under the stars all night!
As part of New York Design Week, the Japan Premium Beef store in the NoHo area of Manhatten displayed this glass sculpture by Sam Baron. Originally from France, Baron is now Creative Director at Fabrica, an international communications research centre.
The delicate installation was hung in the window of the store, combining the beauty of glass with the beauty of a good handmade sausage.
Petr Spatina spent his early life playing the accordion and the piano, before discovering a love for the glass harp. In 2010 he amazed viewers of an Austrian talent show with his self-developed 33-glass harp on which he plays music ranging from classical to pop.
