Why glass is the material of the moment in homewares
Alchemist Ben Edols has produced a series of exquisite works for Sydney interior designer Alexandra Kidd’s inaugural Prima collection.
The furnaces are blasting at 1170 degrees in the ‘hot shop’ at Canberra Glassworks. On the early spring day I visit, pale legs prematurely sporting shorts, I feel instantly tan. But Ben Edols doesn’t break a sweat.
Edols, whose work with his partner Kathy Elliott is held in the permanent collections of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Toyama Glass Art Museum (Japan), is demonstrating the process by which he turns what is essentially a bubbling mix of molten sand, limestone and sodium carbonate into highly desirable objects for the home.
Ben Edols at Canberra Glassworks, creating works for the Prima collection. Dave Wheeler
“It’s an ancient process that never gets old,” he says, pulling a long, hollow metal rod out of a furnace, at the end of which squirms a clear, glistening chrysalis.
Through an hour-long process of gently blowing, turning, sculpting and cooling, Edols will fashion each amorphous critter into either a bulbous vase, a “cloud-like” (his words) bowl or a “blobby” (Edols, again) lamp base for the inaugural collection of homewares for Sydney interior designer Alexandra Kidd. (Edols describes it as “chic, very much like Alex herself”.)
“I’ve always been transfixed by glass,” says Kidd, whose is launching the Prima collection in celebration of 20 years creating interiors for Sydney’s most remarkable homes. “I love the paradoxes of glass, that it’s at once fragile and robust. I love its luminosity, the way it bounces light around a room.”
Sydney interior designer Alexandra Kidd, surrounded by works from the Prima collection, has always been “transfixed by glass”. Dave Wheeler
Canberra Glassworks is the nation’s premier glassmaking facility. Its two furnaces run 24 hours a day, turning out some 550 kilograms of hot glass per week. It includes a kiln studio for glass casting, a mould-making studio, a neon-bending space, a sandblasting workshop, grinding, carving and polishing studios, and a bead-making and flame-working studio.
Which is good news, since there are more than 20 full-time artists-in-residence as well as 100 others who regularly book kiln time at the facility.
These include award-winners such as Patricia Piccinini, Tony Albert, Lucy Simpson and Alex Seton, who have created pieces at Glassworks for exhibitions nationally and internationally. More artists and designers are curated into a constant roster of exhibitions in Glasswork’s gallery; others create commercial work that is sold through the Glassworks shop. Some 90,000 visitors pass through its doors annually.
“Glass has eternal appeal,” says Glassworks’ artistic director Aimee Frodsham, who oversees artist residencies, curates the gallery program and stewards research and development for the facility, which is housed in the former Kingston Power House on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin just east of Parliament House.
“The wonderful thing about glass is that once it gets turned into glass from its raw materials, it stays glass forever,” says Frodsham.
One of the beautiful works in the new Prima collection for Alexandra Kidd. Dave Wheeler
“Even though we’re not a big manufacturer of glass, like window or packaging manufacturers, we’re still really conscious of our footprint, and we are making glass from scratch for artists to use.”
For the past two years, Frodsham has been driving the R&D of a project to take waste glass we’re all familiar with – Cathode-ray tube (CRT) glass, aka TV screens – and turn it into a viable product.
Matt Curtis contemplates charcoal-hued bricks of recycled CRT glass. Courtesy of Canberra Glassworks
Leading the research is Matt Curtis. Upstairs from the furnaces, from one of dozens of workbenches evenly spaced across the first floor, he is working towards the goal of recycling TV screens into sturdy, stress-resistant architectural glass components – much as glass brick technology of the early-20th century enabled the construction of iconic modernist buildings like the Maison de Verre (Glass House). It was designed by French architect Pierre Chareau from 1928-32 and is one of the most visited design attractions in Paris today.
His bench is strewn with charcoal-hued bricks; each one is about 30 sq cm in size and takes two hands to lift. Some feature swirling arc patterns, a delightful outcome of the casting process.
A work by First Nations artist Lucy Simpson from her exhibition at Glassworks earlier this year.
“Sending broken-up bits of CRT glass to add to road base isn’t about recycling, it’s about burying the problem,” says Curtis. “Big business isn’t interested in actually recycling this type of glass since a lot of time is spent in the handling and processing. At Glassworks, we experiment with the technical possibilities while being finely attuned to the aesthetic potential.”
For the moment, though, the crushed and melted black glass has found its way into small-scale artworks, such as the sensual casts of mussel shells created by First Nations artist Lucy Simpson as part of her Baayangalibiyaay exhibition at Glassworks earlier this year. (Some versions of these pieces can be purchased at the Glassworks shop.)
Says Frodsham: “We’re in the business of creating beauty out of the most rudimentary materials, whether that be sand at the very beginning of the process or waste glass as we put it back into the economy.”
Need to know
- Canberra Glassworks is open to the public from Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 4pm, at 11 Wentworth Ave, Kingston, ACT.
- See the Prima collection at alexandrakiddatelier.com
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