Today, The Corning Museum of Glass will unveil its 30th Rakow Commission, the first to be awarded to a jeweler and the first new work to be added to the collection of the museum's Contemporary Art + Design Wing since the March 2015 opening. The work is titled Tantric Object by the avant-garde Swiss jeweler Bernhard Schobinger. It is a necklace of tiny skulls made from the bottom of green poison bottles. Gold laquer adds a decorative flourish to this provocative neckwear, and the word "GIFT" is evident in one of the glass pieces -- which in German means "posion." In a provocative 45-year career, the artist-jeweler has built his reputation on his use of castaway materials such as broken glass and ceramic shards, worn-out erasers, and even the elastic that once kept underwear from falling down.
Shobinger was chosen by Tina Oldknow, Corning's recently retired curator of modern and contemporary glass. According to Oldknow, the subversive jeweler has an “aim not to cultivate a purist attitude toward poor materials, but to work, almost alchemically, on creating blends of materials in particular proportions.”
Tonight, Corning will devote its "Behind the Glass" lecture by Museum of Arts & Design curator Ursula Ilse-Neuman to a discussion of Schobinger’s work, as well as the wider history of glass jewelry. The event will take place in the Corning museum auditorium from 6 to 7 PM.
Displayed next to Schobinger's Tantric Object will be a second work, Glassfly Ring, which the jeweler has gifted to the Museum. Made from a found glass bottleneck, it features two commercial eyeglass lenses that serve as the wings, as well as Akoya pearls that form the eyes, to suggest a common housefly.