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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...

One of the great thrills of hunting for glass on internet auction website TradeMe is when you buy something you don't know what it is, but you have a hunch, and it turns out to be something quite special. Of course, there are also those occasions when the hunch proves to be wrong, and the piece turns out to be nothing, or something of no interest that I can't identify. Which is why I have a box of motley pieces ready to be donated to the Opp Shop... But here's one of the success stories. A chunky art glass goblet, the trader said, with GBC 1979 engraved on the base. No other clues as to its origin or the identity of the maker. The auction was set for bidding to start at $20, with no reserve price. I racked my brains to think who GBC might be, but to no avail.  There was a photo, which had hints of NZ glass - Keith Mahy seemed a possibility, but he clearly wasn't 'GBC'. The photo wasn't as clear as this one, which I took once the piece arrived, but it was g...

In my last post about Sue Treanor, I mentioned Elizabeth McClure as Lecturer in Glass at Carrington Polytechnic, UNITEC in the 1990s. Elizabeth is someone whose role in New Zealand glass is perhaps less well known. To my shame I recall giving a talk about glass in the 1980s in New Zealand without mentioning her, when she was in the audience! She was very gracious about it, and we subsequently had a good interview, in the course of which I learned a lot. I first saw Elizabeth's work in March 1994, at an exhibition Little Jewels organised in the James Cook Hotel in Wellington by the regrettably short-lived Arts Marketing Board of Aotearoa (AMBA). I purchased this exquisite scent bottle there. It's small and delicate, only 5.2 cm in diameter, and decorated in enamels.  It was made in September 1993 - Elizabeth is meticulous in marking her work detail. The bottle had originally been shown in Making Marks the first solo exhibition of her work after her return to New Zealand, held at...

Last year to mark its thirtieth anniversary, the New Zealand Society of Artists in Glass published a major survey of current glass practice in New Zealand.  With 180 pages and a large number of beautiful colour photographs this is a magnificent introduction to the work of 115 of New Zealand's leading glass artists.  Each artist is given a full page spread, with some extending to two pages.  Edited for the Society by Evelyn Dunstan, there is an introductory essay by Grace Cochrane, and a short outline of the beginnings of studio glass in New Zealand by Stuart Park.  There is an introduction to the physics and chemistry of glass by one of the pioneers of glass in New Zealand, John Croucher, now a director of Gaffer Glass.  An illustrated guide to the technology and practice of studio glass describes the range of techniques from cold glass fabrication, warm glass working processes and the several ways of producing hot glass, flamework, glass-blowing, casting and ne...