bodner051

I bought this vase in a TradeMe auction this week. The seller just called it 'Pretty Vase', but I recognised it as a nice example of the work that Chuck and Lesley Simpson and Andrew Williams made at Inglewood from about 1988 - 1990. So I was thrilled to find once I received it that it was well signed with the full name Joan O'Leary and the date 1989. Joan worked with Chuck and Lesley at Inglewood in 1988 and 1989, and while I have several pieces of her work from that period, this is the first I have seen that is so close to the work that Chuck and Lesley were doing themselves. Other pieces I have resemble much more closely the work Joan did later when she moved to work with Mandy Angus in New Plymouth in the 1990s. Several pieces I have from this period are marked 'Glassplant', which was the name former owner Tony Kuepfer painted on the studio wall as a spoof on the Taranaki Think Big projects of the 1980s - the Methanol Plant, the Gas to Gasoline Plant, the ...

Mel Simpson was one of the pioneers of studio glass in New Zealand. He is notable as one of the two founders of the NZ Society Artists of in Glass (1980), which continues today as the national glass artists' organisation in NZ. Mel learned 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. The earliest signed piece I have of his work (top right) is dated 1977, and the latest a 'trophy' dated 1986 (below), though I have two unsigned pieces I bought at an exhibition in Howick in 1991. I think he s...

The work that German glass artist and jeweller Rena Jaros ewitsch created during her stay in New Zealand continues to delight. I bought a platter and a broach in the early 1990s, but at the time I was unable to afford the intricate s mall sculptural pieces she assembled. I recall seeing these at an exhibition at Masterworks in Auckland in 1994 – I bought a broach there since it was quite a bit cheaper. But recently I was delighted to spot several of her sculptures on the internet auction site TradeMe, and to bid successfully for several, for about the same price today that I paid for the broach in 1994. They are delightful pieces, and they will bring a lot of pleasure. Born in Munich in 1962, Rena Jarosewitch studied glass design at the renowned glass institute in Rheinbach near Bonn . After graduating she visited New Zealand , and loved it so much she decided to emigrate here. In 1983 she established a studio at the Christchurch Arts Centre, and began ...

Lynette Campbell died in 2005, cutting all too short a life devoted to making glass. I blogged last year about the enjoyment I get from the pieces of hers I have. Now there's to be a retrospective exhibition of work she left behind, which will provide an opportunity for others to acquire and enjoy Lyn's glass art. Burning Issues is the gallery in Whangārei where Lynette was blowing again just before her death. It was set up by Keith Mahy, who taught Lyn glass blowing at Northland Polytech, beginning in 1989. So it's a really appropriate gallery to host such an exhibition. There's a preview at 5pm on Friday 26 September, and the exhibition runs from then until October 23rd. If you can be anywhere near Whangārei during that period, do go and have a look at this exhibition - it promises to be fabulous. Burning Issues is in the Harbour Basin complex in Whangārei, down by the river.

I have mentioned before my enthusiasm for the distinctive tall bottles Tony Kuepfer made at his Inglewood glass studio in the 1970s and 1980s. From time to time when one becomes available I will add it to my collection, which now numbers about 35 of them. In March I presented three of these bottles to the New Dowse Museum in Lower Hutt following my loan of the bottles for their Doreen Blumhardt exhibition last year. The Dowse did not have an example in their collection, so they were pleased to accept them. Sadly, I also broke one, an early example I have had for a while. But in May a TradeMe dealer from New Plymouth, from whom I have bought glass previously, offered this piece, which I was pleased to buy. It seemed to me to be a later piece, with the elongated neck not so dysfunctionally thin as in Tony's early examples. The mis-shapen lip is a distinctive Kuepfer feature, and the colour is also a favourite of Tony's. As with most of these bottles, it is not signed, thou...

It's been a while since I blogged, but I'm going to try to do so more regularly. One of the things that does slow me up is photography - I've found glass a very challenging medium to photograph. That's partly because I don't have a good lighting setup at home, which links to the ongoing problems I have getting the colour balance right. Since colour is such an important part of glass art, getting it right is really important. So I was thrilled to learn that veteran decorative art photographer Howard Williams is offering a short one day course on photographing glass. Howard has had a long involvement photographing glass and ceramics in New Zealand, and he produces superb work. His course is aimed at glass artists to help them produce good photos of their own work, but I have been accepted as well. I'm really looking forward to this, and hoping to be able to improve what I do considerably. The proof of the pudding will be in the blogging, as they say. The c...

In the 1960s and 1970s, television sets were made in several factories in New Zealand, one being the Philips factory at NaeNae in Lower Hutt. The glass valves and cathode ray tubes used in the TVs of the day were made by skilled glass workers. In their breaks, these people used their glass blowing skills to make items for their families, or to raise money for their social club. The lady who recently sold me the swans on TradeMe said: The “art glass” items made at the Philips factory were made by the glass blowers who made the components for the radio & TVs. They normally made TV tubes and valve casings etc, but when they made a few of these art items in their spare time, they proved quite popular with the staff. The art items were not made generally available to the public and could only be got by or through staff members. The set of swans you have purchased came to me from an aunty who worked at Philips during the late 60s & early 70s. The social club used to sell b...