A New Zealand Glass Rarity from Seville

Giovanni Glass was the name adopted by John Croucher and John Leggott for the glass they made together in Auckland between 1991 and 1993.  Giovanni is the Italian form of the name John, and is appropriate to the Italianate sensitivity of the glass they made.

A Kiwi murrine on the foot was distinctive of Giovanni goblets
  


 
 
 

  Particularly attractive were colourful goblets, with tulip shaped bowls and candystriped stems.  
I had one of these in my collection, when a rather different example was offered for sale on NZ second hand auction site Trade Me.  It was intriguing, so much so that I could not resist bidding for it.  At $43, it was much cheaper than the orange one I had bought new from Masterworks Gallery

This example puzzled me, since it had a decoration and a script that seemed to be set into the glass.  The legend read 'Sevilla New Zealand Expo 92', and on the reverse a stylised fern.
 
 



I sent an email to John Croucher to enquire, and got a very pleasing response.  John said:

You have got something special there. John Leggott and I were commissioned by Ian Fraser, who was the director of the NZ Expo in Seville, to make 50 of these goblets to be presented to various high ranking VIPs in Seville in 1992. We sold them to him for $100.00 each. As far as I know they were all sent to Spain, so I don't know how one of them has ended up in NZ on Trade Me! Note the kiwi murrine stuck on the bottom! All those types of goblet we made around that period had that murrine on them. We sold several hundred of that goblet style.  The Seville goblets are special because they used a photosensitive glass we developed at Giovanni in 1991. There was no engraving involved. The goblet cups have an outer surface of gold ruby photosensitive glass which was exposed to UV light. There was a stencil stuck on the goblet with the Expo guff in black blocking the UV. When the goblet was heated up to around 520oC the exposed area turned ruby and where the stencil was it remained clear with the opal white showing behind. 

Three years later when early New Zealand architectural glass artist Robert Middlestead was sorting out his studio before leaving for the USA, he asked if I would like two buy his two Giovanni goblets, so now I have two more!  These two are not made with photosensitive glass. 
 



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