Deep Blue: Inspiration

Lots to catch up with on the blog front..! 

I'm going to start with some posts about Deep Blue - a piece which I made for an exhibition at Broadfield House Glass Museum: Back to the Future (catch it until 27 January 2013)

The Museum invited West Midlands glass artists to propose new pieces of work - taking inspiration from their collections and archives. Broadfield House has a great collection (I've already done a post on their wonderful glass owls) - so it's definitely worth a visit.  Plus, there's the added bonus of seeing glass blowing in action - glass artist Allister Malcolm has his hot glass studio on site.

from Broadfield House Glass Museum (Image: Simon Bruntnell)

Although I have an obvious soft-spot for the owls, it was this pair of Georgian decanters from the 1780s which actually sparked my imagination. 

It was the colour which hit me first - they couldn't help but stand out from the crowd.  Let's face it, most modern cut crystal is clear/colourless - but in the 1780s these must've been really unusual!

And it wasn't just the colour, but the form too. I like to image that Norman Foster had popped into the Museum just before he designed 30 St Mary Axe (aka the Gherkin). Modern architecture has nothing on these beauties!

Tune in later this week, to find out how the decanters made me abandon my glass (albeit temporarily) in favour of some large sheets of paper, a pencil and a ruler.