bodner051

Until now I've been only dimly aware of crackle glass, a form I tended to associate with trinkets from some European and American glass factories, and not something that appealed to me at all.   So I was very surprised when this cranberry red crackle glass decanter appeared on TradeMe.  The listing read:  Cranberry crackle glass decanter with stopper.   Very pretty and in lovely condition.   Signed by Chuck Simpson 1989.  Very collectible piece. 28cm x 10cm  No-one except me showed any interest in it, so my bid was successful. Now it has arrived I can confirm it is clearly signed Chuck Simpson 1989, when Chuck was working at Inglewood. I can't recall seeing any other piece of crackle ware made by a New Zealand glass artist. Of course, now I'm hoping other examples will show up. An article by Stan & Arlene Weitman in Angela Bowey's Online Glass Museum http://www.glass.co.nz/crackle.htm   tells me that crackle glass is formed by immersing ...

I mentioned in my last post the great provenance provided for a recent acquisition by a catalogue from the first Philips Studio Glass Award exhibition in 1984. Here's a piece of Chuck Simpson's glass I purchased recently, which also has a great confirmation of its provenance. This is clearly signed  'Chuck Simpson', so there can be no doubt who made it. But Chuck Simpson made glass at Byron Bay in Australia before he came to Inglewood with Lesley Justin in 1987, and he made glass at Eumundi in Queensland after he and Lesley, by then his wife, returned to Australia in 1990. It is typical of glass he made at Inglewood, but it is great to have its New Zealand origin confirmed by the marketing card that came with it.   But that is not the first Inglewood piece to have come with its own marketing card.  The piece to the left is signed 'Glass Art NZ', a name which seems to have been used both by Chuck and Lesley Simpson and by Andrew Williams, though that is ...

I've had a couple of pleasing responses to my blogs recently. Chuck and Indiah Simpson's daughter, Whitney-Leigh emailed, expressing appreciation of my words and photos of her parents' work from Inglewood in the 1980s. And the latest Newsletter of the Wanganui Glass Group says "Stuart’s Blog is very well researched and is a great starting point for all of us with an interest in, and appreciation for NZ Glass." It's great when those I write about are interested to read what I write! The Newsletter also brings preliminary news of the events that are being planned for the Wanganui Festival of Glass, to be held in Whanganui from 7 - 15 September this year. Whanganui is a city that its proud of its glass artists, and the annual Festival showcases the best of their work.  The Festival provides a wide range of opportunities to see glass exhibitions, visit artists in their studios, watch visiting glass experts as they give master classes, admire the work of the up and...

The New Zealand Society of Artists in Glass was founded in August 1980 at the first New Zealand Glassworkers' Symposium held in Taradale. The next year the first NZSAG Conference was held at The Hot Glass Company in Devonport.  Since then, NZSAG has held a conference every other year, where glass artists meet to discuss and demonstrate their work.  An important element of these conferences has often been the invitation to international glass artists to come to talk, to teach, to demonstrate, as one way for New Zealand artists to augment their skills. The Devonport conference was attended by Americans Richard Marquis and Ed Carpenter, in hot glass and flat glass respectively. In April 1983 NZSAG held its Conference at the Glass Plant in Inglewood, the studio of Tony Kuepfer. This coincided with the holding of the first major exhibition of art glass in New Zealand, Pacific Glass '83 at the Govett Brewster Gallery in New Plymouth.  The exhibition and the conference marke...

A mistake I made in my article on the history of glass in New Zealand came home to haunt me the other day.  In New Zealand Glass Art I described Inglewood glass artist Chuck Simpson as being Canadian.  A trader on TradeMe offering a stoppered bottle by Chuck (at right - TradeMe 428728782) apparently followed my mistake by saying Chuck was Canadian.  I'm not sure where I got the idea from, but I was wrong. A fascinating article about Chuck Simpson's glass appeared in the Australian journal Craft Arts International (32, 1994-5 p79).  It included biographical information indicating that Chuck was born in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, in 1944. He got a Bachelor's degree in Education in Pennsylvania, and then taught secondary school for fifteen years, mostly in Victoria, Australia.  In 1985 he began working in the hot glass studio of Colin Heaney at Byron Bay in northeastern New South Wales, before moving to New Zealand and leasing Tony Kuepfer's studio at Ing...