bodner051

John Croucher was an important influence on the development of glass in Auckland and New Zealand. After some experimentation and with the support of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council John set up Sunbeam Glassworks in Jervois Road in 1976. Formed as a loose co-op of several craft-workers, glass production included hot glass, flat glass and flame working. In 1981 two new glass-blowers became partners with John Croucher at Sunbeam. Ann Robinson was a student at Elam in 1980, and while there met Australian Garry Nash.  After Ann graduated from Elam, she and Garry joined John Croucher at Sunbeam in 1981. They developed the new Sunbeam studio in McKelvie Street in Ponsonby. This was a highly successful partnership, and the Sunbeam artists brought wide exposure to this new art form.  Photo: Krzysztof Pfeiffer, from Pacific Glass '83. John Croucher at Sunbeam, 1982 Photo: Mark Wilson One of the Sunbeam pieces that made quite an impact was John Croucher's Hot Lips Trilogy , made i...

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 '...