JOIN JANE CONTINUING TO MAKE SENSE OF ART
And this month Jane learnt about Pate de Verre
It literally means ‘a paste of broken glass’ and dates back to the ancient Egyptians who mixed finely crushed glass with a mixture of gum arabic and water and then painted the paste on to the inner surface of a mould. The mould was then fired at a temperature where the glass particles fused, creating a very delicate hollow object.
The French took this a stage further creating a technique using crushed glass of all different sizes and without any paste, filling the mould with the glass pieces and when fired producing a solid object.
Pate de Verre became very popular in the Art Nouveau period in the early 1900s.
I was looking at the programme for the opening ceremony of the UN International Year of Glass which took place in February. Over two days there was a whole programme of talks, but disappointingly, only two had anything to do with the world of art and the place of glass in it. One of the two was given by Kimiake Higuachi from Japan, entitled “Nature of Pate de Verre”. What a fascinating artist. She originally studied music in Milan and Rome but the art of Italy drew her in and she began her art studies with oil painting. She then returned to Japan and learnt the traditional Japanese ceramic techniques making bowls and tea sets, but she wanted to push the strict boundaries of the traditional methods and she did this by combining ceramics and glass.
All her work is inspired by the cycle and power of nature. She has a huge garden and a studio at the foot of Mount Fuji and her work grows from the plants and trees she has planted herself. She uses a vast colour palette – her studio is a mass of trays and containers of different coloured broken glass – from glass powder to more chunky glass pieces.
It is difficult to believe that the cabbage leaves strewn across the land in the photo above are glass – they look so real – and at home on the land.
My favourite pieces of her work are her glass panels of flowers – stunning works of glass art.
