Clare Gaylard Glass
Sometimes the abstract, textural or sculptural qualities of the molten glass informs my making. At others I'm caught up in a narrative, motif or colourway, frequently exploring a small object from nature or history, or a story as a microcosm or a talisman. I relish theatre, costume and the idea of creating drama on a small scale. I create wearable art and objects of significance and beauty. Find a selection of past and current work below.
Contemporary Heirlooms
A Suffolk Craft Society collaboration with the National Trust. Inspired by Ickworth House, grounds and garden. Observing Italienate, architectural flourishes alongside the structures and cycles of plant forms. Looking at the interior chandeliers prompted me to remove colour and opacity in favour of shifting light and form. The resulting 'ghost' effect being expressive of the continuing movement of seasons, generations and eras: 'Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past.' Burnt Norton T S Eliot
A Thousand Flowers WIP
Millefiori (Italian: [ˌmilleˈfjoːri]) is a glasswork technique which produces distinctive decorative patterns on glassware. The term millefiori is a combination of the Italian words "mille" (thousand) and "fiori" (flowers).[1] Apsley Pellatt in his book Curiosities of Glass Making was the first to use the term "millefiori", which appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1849; prior to that, the beads were called mosaic beads. While the use of this technique long precedes the term "millefiori", it is now most frequently associated with Venetian glassware. Wikipedia
Coast
Look, stranger, at this island now The leaping light for your delight discovers, Stand stable here And silent be, That through the channels of the ear May wander like a river The swaying sound of the sea. Here at the small field’s ending pause Where the chalk wall falls to the foam, and its tall ledges Oppose the pluck And knock of the tide, And the shingle scrambles after the sucking surf, and the gull lodges A moment on its sheer side. Far off like floating seeds the ships Diverge on urgent voluntary errands; And the full view Indeed may enter And move in memory as now these clouds do, That pass the harbour mirror And all the summer through the water saunter. 'Seascape' written for Benjamin Britten's music by W H Auden. Suffolk Coastal, where I live, was Britten's home, and the seaside town of Aldeburgh became the setting for his opera, 'Peter Grimes', as well as the M R James' ghost story 'A Warning to the Curious'.
