@outofhand_art on Instagram

Questions for @claregaylardglass Describe your practice in one sentence: Exploring form and narrative through the contradictory process of turning flamework glass into wearable art! How did you come to your primary medium? Via a degree in Silversmithing & Jewellery then teaching art. Twenty years ago I found a remaindered book called ‘Making Glass Beads’. I’d always been fascinated by glass but had never thought of the medium as being within my reach. I was immediately obses

‘The Spirit in the Bottle’ reflects a universal theme of an essence, relic or spirit contained in a vessel. Pitt Rivers Museum famously holds a bottle (swipe to see) said to contain a witch, who if let out will cause ‘a peck of trouble.’ Reliquaries (the foot of Mary Magdalen) carry the remains of saints, conferring miracles and blessings. Canopic jars preserve vital organs. ‘The Spirit in the Bottle’ is a fairytale from the Brothers Grimm, a European variant of the genie or

The Blashkas were father and son #glass artists from Bohemia, born in the 19th Century, making glass eyes was the initial family business. Their peerless and prolific work on plant and marine forms took place in an era when preservation methods lost much in the way of colour, form and detail. This and their skills led to commissions from collectors and museums around the world. As neither took an apprentice, many of their methods and techniques have been lost. I came across a

Coastal ghosts and buried treasure: nearby Aldeburgh (thinly disguised as Seaburgh) is the setting for A Warning to the Curious, a short story by M R James. The plot forms around the legend of three ancient crowns, buried along the coast of East Anglia as talismans for protection from invasion. A modern historian/treasure-hunter and an ancient guardian... You don’t have to look far for more stories around here, Dunwich, a thriving city that the sea took back, stories of bells

Six impossible rings before breakfast, experimentation is essential.

As Out of Hand we (Juliet Lockhart, Alison Bournes and me) have some ghost stories to tell on Instagram this October. This is my first: Friendly ghosts and ancestors: I’d been working with glass for over a decade when I found out my great-grandfather Henry McReavy was a glassblower in Sunderland, when factory-glass production was at its height. ‘Past Conditional, Future Imperfect’ is a mixed-media, self-portrait that reflects the discovered connection. A practical welders glo

WIP: Friday #fireworks glass, gravity and a very hot flame. Watch the video on my Facebook or Instagram.

A couple of years ago we planted three passion flowers to replace a lost favourite. The survivor has been the most fragile and ethereal...

WIP: balancing numerous #glass elements for a cluster necklace. There’s no sunshine today so the glass doesn’t sing but it still glows.

Cluster #glass earrings of fragments, each one sculpted as a single tile, entirely in the flame. Final image: the cabinet of curiosities...

Autumn walk #hideandseek

#glass and #ceramics synchronicity at @britishmuseum with kid #3 wearing one of my rings (next to early, soft-paste porcelain) and giving...

Things I picked up on the evening walk yesterday - with appreciation for a generous Framlingham gardener.

Archaist totem: a stacked sculpture of #glass elements, swipe to see it deconstructed into wearable parts. l developed my #totems to be...

Ripples, fossils and waves, until Sunday 6th September in Wivenhoe.

Opening today at The Sentinel Gallery with @anglianarts in Wivenhoe, a lovely destination for an ‘end of summer’ week. Find a selection...

Find my #glass present glory and fragments of the past! The Suffolk Craft Society at Ickworth House.

‘The vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true’, anyone else? Three #lachrymatory bottles, or tear jars. Find my #glass in the...