OPENING: Glass designed by masters of Viennese Modernism at Le Stanze del Vetro

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Design, Exhibition, Museums, Opening

On April 18th, a new exhibition entitled "Glass of the Architects. Vienna 1900-1937," organized by Le Stanze del Vetro, will open at this center of glass scholarship and exhibition in Venice, Italy. With the cooperation of the MAK — Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria, Le Stanze has assembled key works in glass designed by seminal architects and designers of a unique era of innovation including Josef Hoffman, Koloman Moser, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Leopold Bauer, Otto Prutscher, Oskar Strnad, Oswald Haerdtl, and Adolf Loos. Running through July 31, 2016, the exhibition, which is curated by MAK curator Rainald Franz, includes more than 300 individual works notable for their embodiment of the period's restless search for new form that marked the turn of the 20th century through the escalating conflicts that led to World War II. Even before this movement was labeled "Modernism," there was a widespread feeling that established styles were out of date and something new was needed.

Wednesday November 18, 2015 | by Andrew Page

CURIOSITIES: MIT’s Peter Houk interviewed about unearthed 1957 glass time capsule

FILED UNDER: Curiosities, Design, Education, Events, News, Video

Even before construction of the new nanotechnology lab at MIT has been completed, the facility is already yielding unexpected discoveries. Workers digging into the campus near Building 26 unearthed a sealed glass time capsule that had been buried in 1957 by students and their famous MIT professor Harold Edgerton (1903 – 1990), best known for his strobe photography that froze splashing liquid or the impact of bullets and explosions. The flameworked capsule stuffed with paper and scientific samples bears clear instructions not to open until 2957, or 1,000 years from its time of burial. In an official MIT video, director of collections Deborah Douglas talked about what remains enclosed in the sealed capsule. Whether it will be opened or not is unclear from the video.

Monday November 16, 2015 | by Andrew Page

Today is the 100th birthday of the iconic Coca-Cola bottle design

FILED UNDER: Design, Museums, News

Even though aluminum cans and plastic bottles predominate, there's something about an ice-cold Coca-Cola served in its signature voluptous glass bottle that never fails to impress. The thick glass, shaped to perfectly fit into the hand and with raised lettering, telegraphs ripeness in its organic hourglass form. The patent for this design was issued on November 16, 1915, making today the centennial of this celebrated product packaging that is known around the world. The original design is referenced today in a variety of packaging materials for the world's best-selling soft drink. But it is in the greenish glass blottle that the form is most powerful, providing a visual and tactile sensuality that retains its power despite the proliferation of sophisticated package design in the century since. The story of how this quintessential design came to be is little-known and quite amusing.

Wednesday October 7, 2015 | by Andrew Page

Iittala launches limited-edition “City Bird” series with an eye on social media

FILED UNDER: Design, New Work, News

In a bid to update its 40-year-old line of Tokkia birds, and to give the series a little cutting-edge social media juice, the 135-year-old Finnish glass house Iittala is launching a limited edition of its famous blown-glass birds only available in select markets for which they were named. Only 200 numbered examples of the blown-glass "City Bird" collection will be hand-made, and obsessive collectors must travel to Shanghai, Toyko, Paris, New York, and Helsinki to buy them all.

The 3D molten glass printer developed by MIT can create a diverse range of objects by pouring a stream of hot glass.

Wednesday September 2, 2015 | by Lindsay von Hagn

3-D Glass Printing Heats Up

FILED UNDER: Design, News

Glass, one of the most useful materials at our disposal but one of the hardest to handle, has been a final frontier of sorts in the world of 3-D printing. Even as approaches to printing materials like plastics, polymers, wax, ceramics, and metals, have been increasingly refined, glass has been mostly relegated to crude attempts to form with digital printers that approximate a glass effect. That may be about to change. Driven by the transformative potential that 3-D printed glass could have in art, architecture, medicine, aerospace, communications, safety and security, and more, researchers and engineers, are making progress in overcoming the inherent obstacles to 3-D glass printing (3DGP). Years' worth of experimentation and invention has led to the groundbreaking innovations we have seen this summer - Micron3DP, an Israeli company that designs and manufactures 3-D printer parts, announced a prototype of a new high-temperature extruder printe in June, and MIT recently announced the 3-D hot glass printer developed by the Mediated Matter Group in collaboration with MIT's Department of Mechnical Engineering and MIT's Glass Lab.

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Sunday April 12, 2015 | by Justyna Turek

OPENING: The touring “European Glass Experience” exhibit moves to Venice

FILED UNDER: Design, Events, Exhibition, Museums, New Work, News, Opening

On Saturday, April 18th, The Murano Glass Museum in Murano, Italy, will present the final international exhibition of the European Glass Experience project curated by director Chiara Squarcina. After two years of showcasing the artworks and sketches in Finland, Spain, and Portugal, the upcoming show is considered as the most important one due to larger number of artworks and the historic venue. Almost 80 international artists will present their works to the public. On a special note are the sketches, designed by the artists, which were selected by the scientific committee to be produced by Consorzio Promovetro’s Murano glass masters.The exhibition will run through June 7, 2015, with an opening reception on Saturday, April 17th, starting at 6.30 PM with special conference with remarks by Milan Hlaveš, curator at the Museum of decorative arts in Prague, and Gabriella Belli, director of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and it will continues to the official opening at 7.30 PM. (Disclosure: The author Justyna Turek is one of the artists whose work will be exhibted.)

Tuesday March 24, 2015 | by Andrew Page

The glorious new Corning wing pioneers the use of Gorilla Glass to make display cases disappear

FILED UNDER: Architecture, Design, Exhibition, Museums, News, Opening

As readers of the Spring 2015 edition of GLASS (#138) know, the design of the new Contemporary Art + Design wing at The Corning Museum of Glass is based on the power of natural light to allow artwork in glass to come alive. The issue's feature article ("A New Frame for Contemporary Glass") and back-page essay by the wing's architect Thomas Phifer ("Designing the New Contemporary Wing of The Corning Museum of Glass") reveal a single-minded focus on bathing glass in indirect natural daylight to provide optimal viewing conditions. With architect Phifer viewing the museum wing itself as a vitrine, how to approach protecting the work without interfering with the visual effects so painstakingly achieved? The answer came when the architect, together with the Corning team and exhibit designer Kubik Maltbie, hit upon using the museum's corporate parent's specialty-glass known as "Corning Gorilla Glass," which is widely used in smart phones and tablet computers for its strength, lightness, and optical clarity.

Saturday July 26, 2014 | by Andrew Page

OPENING: Jim Loewer’s Asian-influenced bowls and vases featured in museum shop exhibit

FILED UNDER: Design, Exhibition, Museums, New Work, Opening

The Alternatives Museum Shop at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts will feature the intense colors of Jim Loewer's glass vessels in a special exhibition debuting July 31st and running through September 25th, 2014. Based in Philadelphia, Loewer was trained as a painter, but now devotes himself to flamerworked borosilicate glass vases and bowls based on forms influenced by Japanese vesselware. He is self-taught and appreciates slight irregularities in his work which adds to their character.

L to R: Judges Louis Thomson, Clare Maddison, winner Harry Morgan, and judges David Reekie and Karen Murphy

Monday July 7, 2014 | by Elena Tafone

U.K. Glass Artist organization announces winners of design awards

FILED UNDER: Announcements, Award, Design, News

UPDATED 7/15/2014

The first gallery is organized around works inspired by nature, and this exhibit will be anchored by Katherine Gray’s 2009 work Forest Glass.

Sunday June 29, 2014 | by Andrew Page

Corning Museum of Glass pushes back opening date for new contemporary wing

FILED UNDER: Design, Exhibition, Museums, New Work, News

Originally set for a December 2014 opening, the new North Wing of the Corning Museum of Glass is now going to open to the public on March 20, 2015. The construction of the ambitious expansion project with a $64 million budget is on schedule, according to a Corning Museum spokesperson, but the additional time is needed for installing the 70 works that will be the hallmark of the new 26,000-square-foot gallery dedicated to showcasing the larger scale typical of contemporary work in glass. "We will begin installing our objects in the galleries once the building is complete," writes Yvette Sterbenk, the museum's senior manager of communications in an email exchange with the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet. "As the caretakers of the world’s most important collection of glass, we want to make sure we give ourselves time to do this appropriately. Instead of opening in the winter, we set the opening around the vernal equinox – the start of spring – which gives us a great opportunity to celebrate the idea of light, as befits the new building."

Glass: The UrbanGlass Quarterly, a glossy art magazine published four times a year by UrbanGlass has provided a critical context to the most important artwork being done in the medium of glass for more than 40 years.