Peacemakers
2024
Blown and wheel-cut glass, borosilicate glass, wood case, felt, brass hardware.
For the exhibition "People's Art" at the National Glass Centre, five contemporary artists responded to objects from a prominent collection of folk art. My objects, a selection of victorian toasting glasses led me down a winding path as follows:
1. Peripheral activities. While researching the ways in which these glasses were intended to be used I strayed into looking at other activities the Victorian toaster/toastees might engage in. This led to dueling by means of swords or pistols, which, although significantly in decline in the 19th century, was still used by some to settle disputes. I already had an affinity to the dueling pistol cases - the highly customized wooden boxes which contained, in padded green felt, everything needed for two people to load and fire a single round at each other.
2. A possible resolution. The work imagines an alternative to the duel, in which disagreeing parties partake in a pacifying ritual.
3. Towards a Folk Art. Into the mid 20th century, the creation of glass objects was relegated to industry, rarely existing outside of a factory setting. 1962 saw the beginning of “Studio Glass,” in which artists built small furnaces to use in their own studios. Fast forwarding to the early ‘90’s a new, underground development emerged: the Glass Pipe Movement. Existing in a sphere of dubious legality, the practitioners of the GPM were often self-taught, exploiting the properties of heat resistant borosilicate glass shaped on a concentrated torch flame to create pipes for cannabis consumption. What started as a true “people’s art” has, in a matter of decades, blossomed into a fully functioning craft practice, advancing technologies of torch and tool design as well as glass chemistry, with the formulation of an entire spectrum of borosilicate colors.
4. Cutting. In a nod to the fashions of the times from which the glasses came, one could assume that any glass of high esteem during this period would be made of cut crystal. Once a thriving industry in the UK, cut glass is now an endangered craft.
5. The title: A reference to the Colt single-action revolvers of the same name.
Exhibition and process photography: Colin Davison