Glass making kindles torch of cultural creativity

By Derek Lee
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, Nov 16, 2003, Page 17

Summer, sand-cast glass with painted gold and printed inclusions by Australia artist Pamela Stadus. PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL TAIWAN CRAFT RESEARCH INSTITUTE

An and two-day seminars in Taipei earlier this month by Australian glass artists Gerry King, Pamela Stadus and Roger Buddle have stimulated nationwide interest in modern glass art, especially in local artistic circles and among government officials who have been organizing a two-month-long cultural event celebrating this elegant art form.

The exhibition also serves to remind Taiwan's artists that they must keep taking bold steps forward to explore creative ideas and artistic designs. If modern glass making in Australia is able to progress in such a splendid way within a period of approximately 30 years, Taiwan -- blessed with around 100 years of tradition in glassware -- should find no difficulty making an impression on the international stage.

The oldest glass objects that have been found are beads produced around 4,000 years ago in Egypt. Though Taiwan's glass industry, based in Hsinchu, is only a century old, it manufactures various glass items for export and local consumption. At the height of the glassware export trade in the 1980s, there were about 100 large-scale factories in Hsinchu.

Fragment of Wilderness, multi-layered kiln-formed glass by Australian artist Roger Buddle. PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL TAIWAN CRAFT RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Now, less than a dozen, that employ more than 10 people, remain. Chen Tien-li (程天立), regional director of the National Taiwan Craft Research Institute, said that China had eroded Taiwan's competitiveness in this field.

"Right after Taiwan opened its doors for cross-strait visits in the late 1980s, there was a massive migration of Taiwanese traditional craft industries [to China] in search of cheap labor. This has contributed greatly to the sudden and drastic decline in export volumes and has dealt a serious blow to the livelihood of craftsmen in the craft industry as a whole," Chen said.

Atlantis Find, kiln-formed glass and aluminum base by Australian artist Gerry King. PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL TAIWAN CRAFT RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Problems to the decline and demise of traditional glass factories, however, were in-built as well. Factories tended to be vast in size, manufacture in large quantities and thus consumed enormous amounts of capital. For the sake of saving energy and other costs, a factory smelting furnace, which was heated up to 1350℃ to 1450℃ to maintain the liquid state of the glass, could cope with tonnes of glass a day. But, melted glass had to be used on the same day, or go to waste. It therefore became practically impossible for individual artists to sustain private glassware studios or workshops prior to the early 1960s.

Pamela Stadus pours out melted glass at her workshop in South Australia. PHOTO COURTESY OF NATIONAL TAIWAN CRAFT RESEARCH INSTITUTE

The glassware industry landscape only changed when Harvey Littleton, a University of Wisconsin professor and ceramic artist, and Dominick Labino, a chemist, organized two glass-blowing workshops at the Teledo Museum of Art, Ohio in 1962. The pair showed that an individual artist could work with molten glass in a studio environment. Under Littleton's guidance, world-class glass artists such as Dale Chihuly and Marvin Lipofsky made their marks. Other graduates from Littleton's classes also created workshops and spread the new-found technology to artists in America and then around the world.

Performing Instruments, by Taiwanese artist Huang An-fu. PHOTO COURTESY OF HSINCHU MUNICIPAL GLASS MUSEUM

The US' Lakeview museum celebrates the revolutionary Studio Glass Art Movement of the 1960s and takes up the modern glass production story. "As those pioneers moved increasingly beyond the sphere of craft they also shifted from producing purely functional wares towards artistic and sculptural pieces. Today, artists trained in all media, including sculpture and painting, are exploiting the qualities of glass in new expressive ways."

Orange Longevity, blown overlay, sandblastedm engraved, cut and hand finished glass by Taiwanese artist Sunny Wang. PHOTO COURTESY OF SUNNY WANG

Since this time, glass craft production has largely been freed from large-scale industrial settings and has been able to tap into techniques unknown to artists in the old days. More importantly, this novel technology offers an unprecedented opportunity for individual artists all over the world to explore glass as a medium for artistic creation, now that they are able to use smaller, studio-sized furnaces.

Floating Red 2000, a wall panel by Australian artist Klaus Moje.

In 1988, a Taiwanese movie-director-turned-glass-artist Heinrich Wang (王俠君) returned from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. He made use of the lost-wax-casting method to create glass artifacts which had a Chinese cultural context. Wang's works were so remarkable that his glass art company Tittot (琉園), founded in 1994, now manages more than 70 outlets globally in addition to 17 stores in Taiwan. It employs more than 400 art workers.

Frament Vase, kiln-formed glass and coldworked galss base by Australian artist Gerry King.

The phenomenal success of Wang and his associate Yang Hui-shan (楊惠珊), an award-winning movie-star-turned artist, sent shock waves through the declining traditional glassware community in Taiwan. Soon enough, a demand for new insight and the expression of modern artistic forms in the field of craft design led to the development of a Taiwanese version of the US Studio Glass Art Movement. As a result, traditional glassware craftsmen and artists from other fields responded to Wang's timely call to master contemporary artistic designs. Individual ceramic and glass art studios or workshops sprang up like mushrooms all over Taiwan.

Winter, sand-cast glass with painted gold and printed inclusion by Australian artist Pamela Stadus.

Y. S. Wang (王永山), CEO of Tittot, said his team of artists has managed lost-wax casting so well that Taipei has now become one of the major world centers in terms of lost-wax art in the last five years, surpassing perhaps even the reputation of French company Daum's products.

"The ability to produce world-class designs in glass art by local artists will lift Taipei's status and allow it to compete shoulder to shoulder with Prague, Venice and Seattle within the next decade," Wang said, adding his staff's abilities compare favorably with international standards in the sphere of glassware design.

Leadership, modernity and idealism are the three qualities held dearly by Tittot. Its success and emphasis on modern artistic designs have created a ripple effect that has spread to other media and is leading Taiwan's cultural enterprises to a new and bright horizon.