Journal

Heat and light.... our favourite combination. Love glassmaking.

Autumns colours.

Looking for the first signs of autumn.
I spent time finding the early leaves that turned to gold.

Now they are the majority as I look out of my window.

The sun on the bracken as it turns from green to gold is beautiful. The rich hues and depth of autumnal colour was a feast for the eyes on my Sunday morning walk.

I always like to draw out the feeling, the essence of the subject for each design.

It's always been part of my life, sketching and keeping something of a visual diary. Old art school habits die hard, and serve me well is trying to work out whats important when thinking about making a new limited edition bowl.

The subject of our third Limited Edition of 2022, while unloved by many, once played a major role in day to day Moors life.

Bracken covers part of the Dale in a green canopy every year; as it dies backs in autumn the landscape turns bronze.

In times past it wasn’t just the pernicious weed that blocks footpaths and trails.

Gathered off the Moor, by women for the most part, bales of bracken would be dried in great heaps for livestock bedding, for winter vegetable clamp storage, it would be stuffed into packaging crates to keep cargo safe, as a mulch, in soap making and the ash used as a fumigant.

Clearly, one of the most important uses was by the Huguenot’s. Rosedale’s first glass makers built pits to burn bracken, using the resultant potash as a flux to reduce the temperature required to melt sand.

Potash remains a vital ingredient today.

We hope you enjoy the warm autumnal bronze of our third limited edition bowl of 2022.

A warm bronze bowl with a bronze lip wrap.

Autumns colours are slowly appearing.

Location Glasshouse Arts Centre Ruskin Glass Centre Wollaston Road Amblecote Stourbridge DY8 4HF

23 July to 30 October 2022
Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 4pm
Stourbridge Glass Museum
£4 entrance charge

What a spectacular year 2022 is for the Contemporary Glass Society. From humble beginnings 25 years ago, it has developed over the years into a thriving and proactive society supporting a membership of over 1,000 British and international contemporary glass artists.

To celebrate their quarter century representing and promoting contemporary glass, the CGS is showcasing a special celebratory three month long exhibition entitled, “CGS at 25: Past, Present, the Future”, hosted by the new Stourbridge Glass Museum.

And yes, thats a very early Aesculus in the pic. Thank you CGS.