NZ Glass 2

Greg Smith was a founder member at Avalon Glass on the West Coast of the South Island from 1985 to 1995. Greg talked about this remarkable studio in an even more remarkable talk he gave to the Glass Art Society in Seattle in 2003, and I wrote a blog entry about it in December 2012 at http://newzealandglass.blogspot.com/2012/12/avalon-glass-should-not-be-forgotten.html . In 1995 Greg set up Te Miko studio at Punakaiki with his then wife Carolyn Hewlett. As well as blown glass work they made glass jewellery. Carolyn worked as Greg's hot glass assistant. Te Miko was disbanded in 1999.    In response to this image, Greg Smith said in a Facebook post in 2021: I made this material in a small open cast mold in Oceanside California with Bullseye Glass - scrap and confetti. I got one other piece out of the cast. The centre core was made using ceramic fibre board which at the time was unavailable in NZ. A great help in casting.  I think it was 95. I had Arts CounciI funding for a kiln g

The Hot Glass Company was the partnership between Peter Raos and  Peter Viesnik that flourished in Devonport, Auckland between 1980 and 1989. I thought this was an early example, made before they knew how to get the bubbles out of the glass, but, ignorant non-glassy that I am, was I ever wrong! The bubbles were deliberately created.    Peter Raos has told me by email: "This piece looks like one I made. We used to make tints like this pale blue glass and there was a bubble mix we dipped the first gather in that produces the multitude of bubbles. The id on the piece as mine is partly the regular form with the single trail evenly twisted as well as the ring shaped punty. Also the degree of twist in the trail is how I would do that. The trail was a nod to the Egyptian glass of old. "The black spots are an unintended element caused by "tramp iron" coming from the blowing iron. "The stickers would be from the mid 1980s. The piece looks like the punty has been tor

Those of you who, like me, studied Latin at school and University will know that this phrase means 'Thus Passes Worldly Glory', ie fame is fleeting and the glorious are soon forgotten.  But fortunately that is not the case in this Blog.   I recently compiled for the members of the NZ Society of Artists in Glass a quiz on earlier NZ glass artists.  Some of the questions were easy, come were harder. One question, however, was apparently so hard that not a single person answered correctly.  I asked: Which two artists made glass under the partnership name Gloria in Auckland in the 1990s?  The answer is Ruth Allen and Vivienne Bell . The fact that they appear to have been forgotten is all the more galling since Ruth was the President of the NZ Society of Artists in Glass in 1996-8, and Vivienne was a speaker at NZSAG panels and conferences at the same period.   Signed GLORIA NZ 1997        Ruth Allen was born in New Zealand, and attended the Canberra School of Art, studying under