Laura Birdsall Glass Art for Sale

Glass Art by Laura Birdsall

Statement

I am constantly fascinated by small details in nature, a tiny seed pod, a beach pebble or the edge of a fish’s fin, which was the starting point for these vessels. 

The exterior and rim are meticulously hand carved, then sandblasted and acid dipped to create a soft, tactile surface. This subtly contrasts with the glassy interior.

Each piece is hand blown.  As it is being made, the hot glass is soft and luminous and I try to preserve these qualities in the finished piece.

Often the decoration in my work is integral to the form, the only addition being layers of colour inside the glass. This layering of opaque and transparent colours gives each piece a rich and vibrant depth which makes the most of the ever changing play of natural light available.

Foreword by Charles R. Hajdamach

Laura Birdsall is one of the few glass artists to have been selected for all three of the British Glass Biennale Exhibitions at Stourbridge as part of the International Festival of Glass. That classy pedigree is echoed in her impressive list of awards and international exhibitions.

While completing her Masters degree in ceramics and glass at the Royal College of Art she was awarded the Charlotte Fraser Prize which goes to the best work in progress. In 2006 she won the Best Newcomer award in the prestigious Bombay Sapphire Prize which toured to New Zealand, France and Italy. Her work has also been seen in Switzerland, Estonia and Holland.

Laura has honed her glassmaking skills in several leading glass workshops, most recently as the principal hot glassmaker at the BlowZone studio operated by Iestyn Davies. After graduating in 2006 she spent a year working as the resident glass artist at the College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, the proving ground for many of the top contemporary Scandinavian glass designers and makers.

Her work has always concentrated on organic shapes, sometimes with wavy edges and more recently with dimples, and there has been a conscious juggling with the contrasts between the interior and exterior surfaces of her blown sculptural forms. In the work from about 2004 this took the form of a profusion of thin cuts offering a textured and tactile exterior. Gradually the clear glass body was replaced by cased vessels, the outer skin usually in white opaque glass with various coloured inner casings.

Laura’s current work takes the interior versus exterior idea even further with the emphasis now decidedly on the interior space. She is exploring the idea of the pregnant form and germination, of the object partially formed, and when one looks inside these cave-like cased and dimpled forms there is a strong sense of transformation in the protrusions or blown additions nestling inside the protective outer shell. She has described these dimly illuminated caves as “imagined spaces inhabited by strange and curious organisms, a fantastic voyage through awe-inspiring landscapes and miniature worlds. It is the otherness of nature that strikes a chord with me”.

Originally from Stourbridge Laura has maintained her passion to work with the blown form and with the transparent and translucent properties of glass which were such a hallmark of the great Victorian period of Stourbridge glassmaking but which now are less easy to learn as glass departments became re-organised into modular teaching systems in the 1990s or at worse are now closing. In her hands she has shown that blown glass is still a beautiful, fascinating and magical creation.

Charles R. Hajdamach

View Laura Birdsall's Curriculum Vitae...