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factories is in decline. With its end, intangible qualities of a community’s capabilities, potentialities, and social relationships, will disappear. Despite this trend, the exceptional qualities of glass hold enormous potential as a modern, relevant design material. Glass records a memory of its journey, from its molten state to its cooled solid form. The blowing process is a series of steps that stretch, contain and restrain the fluid material. The innate qualities of glass are liquidity, refraction, reflection, magnification, distortion, and absorption of light. It can also contain air, which can be controlled and used to create remarkable patterns that refract light, such as the Reticello technique popular in Italian styles. Glass can be opaque transparent or translucent. It can contain texture and colour within the body of the material or on its surfaces. A spectrum of colour can be controlled to create patterns, resulting in the bending, containing or directing of light. Much of this work can only be achieved by hand and possibilities for exploiting these characteristics are infinite. By collaborating with field experts, creating exciting lighting solutions, which avail of these qualities, is possible. The essential
ingredients for collaborative success, are communication, patience, time and financial investment. Product designers can hold the key to advancing ideas on new products that are relevant to contemporary living. Finding suitable affordable solutions to product development and exploration with field experts remains a difficult stumbling block. All too often, a misunderstanding of the material, and a limited knowledge of production methods and timescale needed to evolve new ideas, prevents designers from attempting innovative ideas with skilled glassblowing teams. A lack of financial investment mean that many projects never evolve beyond initial drawings. A number of glass centres have evolved where residencies and research projects are supported and investigated. CIAVmeisenthal in France, for example, has supported a number of recent lighting projects. Residencies in places such as Pilchuck glass school, USA, Canberra glassworks arts centre in Australia and Nuutajaravi glass centre in Finland are offered each year. However many of these residencies are availed of by artists wishing to pursue creative exploration of personal work rather than items for commercial production. Glass depart-
ments of art and design schools encourage collaboration with established designers and emerging designers. Prototyping can often evolve more easily in these environments. Specific initiatives such as the recent European network ‘Glass is Tomorrow’ can also contribute to be a catalyst in this regard, bringing together designers and makers in traditional glass centres to explore and share ideas on evolving new products. Significant financial investment, which allows creative exploration for the production of glass objects including lighting, can lead to developing successful commercial answers to a contemporary lifestyle and ensure the future of traditional glass manufacturing.
Róisín de Buitléar is an artist and educator, based in Dublin, Ireland. CAUTION! Fragile, a collaborative exhibition of glass by de Buitléar with master craftsmen from Waterford, will be shown at the Museum Of Glass in Tacoma, USA, from 9th November 2013 to 30th September 2014. www.roisindebuitlear.com