Some glass is shaped by blowing, some fashioned by a lathe, and some engraved like silver.     Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79)

All cut glass is barbarous    John Ruskin (1819-1900)

There was a rough stone age and a smooth stone age and a bronze age, and many years afterward a cut-glass age.     F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

The Cutting Edge illustrates various ways in which one of the great artistic traditions in the history of glass extends into the contemporary realm - and it does so specifically in relation to recent practice in Australia. Indeed this is the tradition of cutting, engraving and otherwise shaping or decorating glass as if it were an artificial hardstone conducive to being worked in the manner in which a skilled lapidary cuts and polishes gemstones.¹

In his famous Historia Naturalis, the Roman author, Pliny the Elder, referred to glass vessels that were made and decorated in this way, thus confirming that the painstaking and demanding techniques of glass-cutting, carving and engraving are almost as long-established as the process of making glass itself. However, as venerable as these 'cold-working' techniques may be, they have been eclipsed somewhat, in the popular imagination at least, by the more obviously spectacular process of glass-blowing. ²

In either process - wheel or point engraving - the achievement of a clear and well-cut 'edge' in a design is the goal of the artist- or artisan-craftsperson - a result that underlies the choice of title for this exhibition, a title that also has the more familiar connotation of stylistic or conceptual innovation.

As Pliny says, Roman craftsmen excelled in cutting and engraving glass (as they did in cutting and polishing gemstones), and they perfected the complicated technique known as cameo-cutting. This method was used to carve the decoration of the celebrated Portland Vase in the British Museum. The process involves blowing a vessel 'blank' with several layers of glass, each of a different colour, after which portions of the outer layers are successively and selectively carved back to reveal a multi-coloured design standing proud of the surface. Chinese glassmakers also specialised in the art of cameo-carving vessels (cat. 3) with motifs based on stylised plant forms.

In central Europe, the German and Bohemian or Czech traditions of gem- and glass-cutting were particularly influential and reached their zenith during the Baroque period (cat. 2). This regional tradition survives to this day. In the 18th and 19th centuries, English and Irish master-craftsmen excelled at elaborate prismatic cutting (cat. 7) for chandeliers and table glass, in addition to wheel-engraving featuring pictorial motifs of a commemorative, allegorical or narrative kind (cat. 6). In the 1870s and 1880s, the prominent Stourbridge firm of Thomas Webb & Sons engaged masters in the cameo-carving of designs (cat. 10) whose historicising character was widely admired at the international exhibitions held around the world at the time.

In France in the late 19th century, the techniques of acid-etching, engraving and cameo-carving were used to execute romantic and 'painterly' decoration that is typical of a circle of designer-makers, including Eugène Rousseau (1827-91) and Emile Gallé (1846-1904), who worked in the Art Nouveau style. This important movement is represented in this exhibition by a Japanese-influenced vase by Rousseau (cat. 9) and a vessel with impressionistic decoration (cat. 11) by the brothers Auguste (1853-1909) and Antonin (1864-1930) Daum. In the early 20th century, a sparing but eloquent use of wheel-engraving distinguished the early modernist glass (cat. 12) made in England and Scandinavia.

Over the past four decades, with the steady rise to prominence of the international studio glass movement, and the growing engagement with techniques other than 'mainstream' glass blowing, there has always been a contingent of artists for whom 'cold-working' techniques are the foundation of their art. For these artists, the process of modulating or modelling the surface of glass is 'the probity of art' as Ingres said of the discipline of drawing. Traditionally, these 'cold-working' techniques (as opposed to the manipulation of glass in a hot and fluid state) have included diamond-point or point-engraving, wheel-engraving including the cutting of intaglio (i.e. cut into or below the surface) and relief (i.e. projecting above the surface) decoration, cameo-cutting, acid-etching, and more recently sandblasting. The polishing of all or a portion of this cut, carved or engraved decoration is another aspect of the 'cold-working' repertoire.

In this last respect, it was said of Baruch Spinoza ⁴ - described as the 'noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers' ⁴ - who earned his living as an optical lens grinder, but died young from the effects of inhaling glass powder, that his quest for 'the primal and absolute' in human conduct was 'apprehended in a perfect transparency', a condition that may be compared with the essential purity and clarity of light-inflecting glass forms such as those produced by the artists - both historical and modern - represented in this exhibition. Of the modern and contemporary works included in The Cutting Edge some are by artists whose practice is exclusively concerned with engraving or cutting, while others are by artists whose oeuvre is closely associated with the 'cold-working' idiom but embraces other techniques such as gilding, enamel-painting and kiln-forming.

When the influential Victorian-era critic, John Ruskin, once famously denounced 'all cut glass (as) barbarous', he was reacting against a prevailing fashion for table glass that featured an extravagant repertoire of deeply-grooved, geometric or prismatic patterns designated as 'facet', 'flute', 'hobnail', 'star', 'strawberry diamond' and 'pillar' cutting. As Ruskin saw it, the practice of cutting or engraving glass with such elaborate patterns was a betrayal of the fluid and organic nature of the medium, an affront to the noble concept of truth to materials, and generally contrary to the process of glassblowing itself. A lover of Venice and all things Venetian, Ruskin preferred the curvilinear grace and fragile delicacy of the celebrated Venetian glass known as cristallo.

In The Cutting Edge, works by 16 contemporary artists are seen alongside a smaller representation of historical glasses exemplifying certain of the antique traditions noted above, although the connections drawn here between historical and contemporary works are conceived as much in the spirit as in the letter of the exercise. All the same, such comparisons invite a keener appreciation of the achievements, formal and technical, of the contemporary practitioner.

Bearing in mind that these links between earlier and current methods of cold-working glass are as much poetic and evocative as they are direct and unequivocal, we should consider how, for example, the supple calligraphic engraving on the bowl of the Dutch 17th century wine glass echoes the contours of that vessel while anticipating the equally fugitive passages of spidery handwriting that penetrate the surface sheen of Jessica Loughlin's hull-shaped forms (cat. 34, 35).

We may also compare the sheer fluency of the Dutch calligraphy with the misty incisions that encase the luminous Double gatherer (cat. 36) by English-born artist Stephen Procter. And in like mind, we consider here the gossamer-like threads of cold-worked incisions that activate the otherwise still and silent surfaces of Mel Douglas's Echelon (cat. 14). The antique Dutch glass was intended for quiet contemplation and a comparable mood of meditative calm is a signal aspect of the recent works by Procter and Douglas. Alluding, as he does, to hierarchies of historical 'ornament', Brian Hirst revisits the decorative vernacular of Renaissance and Baroque ceremonial vessels in which, as with Hirst's own work, there is a mixing of materials and decorative techniques including fine linear engraving (cat. 32).

Consider also the compositional eloquence and sculptural character of the relief and intaglio carving on the Saxon, Irish and Bohemian glasses (cat. 2, 6, 8), and the comparable, if entirely abstracted, modulations of surface that define the works of Mark Thiele (cat. 38, 39) and Tim Edwards (cat. 21, 22), as they do the dappled, rhythmically grooved surfaces of collaborative works (cat. 17, 18, 19, 20) by Benjamin Edols and Kathy Elliott. Compositional finesse and naturalistic allusion combine in the thinly-etched botanical motifs on Fiona Hall's Fronding vase (cat. 27), while the rich pictorial tradition associated with cameo-cut imagery is clearly in evidence here in the consummate achievements and altogether different styles of work by Kevin Gordon (cat. 23, 24, 25, 26), Anne Dybka (cat. 15, 16), and Tony Hanning (cat. 28, 29, 30, 31).

While making no claims whatsoever to the kind of illusionistic imagery seen in the superbly engraved central medallion of the 19th century Bohemian covered goblet (cat. 8), there are contemporary works in this exhibition - notably by Robert Knottenbelt (cat. 33) and Kirstie Rea (cat. 37) - that similarly engage our attention on the strength of their intriguing play with transmitted and refracted light and on the basis of their allusion to either a familiar regional terrain and regional lore and history.

Finally, by articulating form with short, sharp, diagonal cuts that conjure up memories of 'cut-and-slashed' Elizabethan hose, Jane Bruce (cat. 13) gives contemporary expression to a style of dynamic, zig-zag cutting that is illustrated by a fine Irish claret jug (cat. 7) included in this exhibition. Similarly, it might be said of Richard Whiteley's Ø x 3 (cat. 40) that although it is a work clearly influenced by the famous Czech artists, Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychotva, its tapering, architectonic form also calls to mind the optical splendour and prismatic incident of this same deeply-cut claret jug. Thus, in drawing 'evocative' connections such as these between works from the past and works by modern and contemporary artists, The Cutting Edge seeks to locate aspects of recent Australian glass within a context that fosters a wider appreciation of the current work and a better understanding of its relationship to one of the great traditions in the history of glass.

Geoffrey Edwards
Guest Curator

Notes

1. For general information on the subject, see Engraved Glass, International Contemporary Artists, Tom and Marilyn Goodearl, Antique Collectors' Club, Woodbridge, Suffolk, England, 1998. For information on various Australian glass artists who use these techniques, see Australian Glass Today, Margot Osborne (ed), Wakefield Press, Kent Town, SA, 2005. This last reference includes a chapter by the present writer titled Old traditions in a new millennium, that deals in part with recent cut and engraved glass. For information on Australian glass in general, see The Crafts Movement in Australia: A history, Grace Cochrane, New South Wales University Press, Sydney, 1992 Material Culture: Aspects of contemporary Australian craft and design, Robert Bell, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2002.
2. For further information on works by Willem Mooleyser and other historical works in this exhibition on loan from the National Gallery of Victoria, see Art of Glass - Glass in the Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Geoffrey Edwards, Macmillan and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1998.
3. Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), a Sephardic Jew who was excommunicated from his faith for heresy, was born in Amsterdam and chose to work as a humble lens grinder to remain aloof from academic obligations. His famous Ethics was published posthumously in the year of his death.
4. This description is by Bertrand Russell. See Spinoza, Ethics and De Intellectus Emendatione, T. S. Gregory (introduction), Everyman's Library, London, reprinted 1955.