Modernist art glass: Italy & Australia.

When I was doing art history, Art consisted of painting, sculpture and architecture. Even illuminated manuscripts were studied for their paintings, not for their other art forms eg book binding, printing, wood cuts. And for students who wanted to write academic theses about silver art, ivories, treen, ceramics or textiles, there was always a desperate scramble to find top quality supervisors and examiners.

What changed that for me as a postgraduate was finding other art forms that were fascinating: a] silver art of my beloved Huguenots, b] birth of C18th porcelain in central Europe and c] arrival of art glass in Australia. Art glass, for the purposes of this post, is an object of hand blown glass, designed in the first instance for decorative purposes. 

Sommerso/sunken glass is an art glass from the Italian island of Murano in the late 1930s with two or more layers of contrasting colours. These layers are formed by dipping the object in molten glass; the outermost layer is typically clear. Sommerso was developed during in the inter-war era and its sharp lines and minimal decoration quickly became a popular technique for vases. There is something about the crispness and lack of applied decorative elements on top of Murano that might remind the reader of the Gordon Studio art glass in Victoria.

Gordon, Burnt Earth Bottles,  2010, 
up to 50 cm high

Sommerso glass stem vase, Italy

20th Century Glass

The Scottish duo Alasdair and Rish Gordon graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1957, then moved to Hadelands Glass Works in Norway. The two artists soon established an engraving workshop in Bergen. Using full lead crystal blanks blown by Hadelands, they started using sandblast in their sculptures, and were there for the beginning of studio glass.

In 1973, Alasdair and Rish returned to Scotland, establishing a studio with Strathearn Glass Company. They would have stayed in Scotland, had it not been for the invitation to participate in Western Australia’s 150th Anniversary Celebrations in 1979. The family decided to emigrate to Australia, and as soon as possible they established The Gordon Studio in Fremantle, a port suburb of Perth.

Their daughter Eileen Gordon was born in Norway and was trained in England, then emigrated to Australia in 1980 with her parents. After a decade of working in glass studios here and abroad, Eileen established the her own studio in 1990. I had seen a lot of the Gordon studio’s loveliest pieces in a retail outlet in Melbourne, but had never seen their gallery and studio in semi-rural Mornington Peninsula.

Gordon, Centrifugal Platter, 2007, 
52cm diameter

Melbourne-born Grant Donaldson, Eileen’s husband, was not born into a glass art family. He left the land and started his career in glass in 1990, assisting his wife in this modern art medium. By 1994 the midlife career change was complete - he sold his farm and relocated Gordon Studio Glassblowers to the beachside resort town of Rosebud. Once Grant was working full time on his own glass art, he too became recognised as an innovative glass blower. Now they are in Red Hill, not far from Rosebud.

Naturally some pieces were more attractive to me than others. I did not particularly like the glass flowers mounted on removable stainless steel rods for planting in the garden; nor the mushrooms, cactus plants or bulrushes. Even the tiny Kaleidoscope Bottles seemed too small and decorated to be truly modern. But the large bottles, vases, platters & dishes are sublime: strong colours, sleek shapes and uncluttered by decorative add-ons. Had I found the centrifugal platters in the middle of Finland or Cuba, I still would have guessed that the colours and shapes were purely Australian. There is something special about the landscapes and seascapes of the Mornington Peninsula, its soils, trees and sunsets.

Donaldson, Jelly Bottles,  2010, 
68cm high

Perhaps the Gordon studio's most prestigious international exposure each year was at the Munich International Craft Fair in Germany, 1999-2000. In Australia the biggest success for the company was at the National Art Glass Gallery in Wagga Wagga. But for children visiting the studio, the highlight was watching the molten glass get coloured, moulded, patted with timber paddles and fired, endlessly.