NZ Glass 2

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