Our upcycled glassware is back on display in the craft case at Worcester City Museum & Art Gallery, Foregate Street. There also happens to be a fantastic exhibition on in the main gallery upstairs, of the work of renowned artist Stanhope Forbes. Well worth a visit!
There’s still time to reserve your ticket for the Pink Ribbon Foundation Ladies Night at The Pear Tree Inn, Smite.. Just give them a call!
Yesterday, after many months of good intentions, I finally got round to experimenting with soy wax. As I’ve reported in previous posts there are some items where I struggle with the idea of altering them in any permanent fashion, as they are just too beautiful in their own right. That said, they are often difficult to use for their originally intended purpose, as tastes have changed and our lifestyles and activities have moved on. Take this gorgeous ochre glass cup and saucer, for instance. I love these, but if I’m honest, they’re just too small for my rather conspicuous tea consumption. They are however, rather splendid as soy wax containers, adding an elegant touch of 1960s cool to any room.
I made good use of an unexpected day at home. My youngest was off school with a nasty cold, so I was confined to the house, but had a good stretch of time while she was asleep, to turn my kitchen into something resembling a laboratory. The trouble with trying something new is that unless you get on with it straight away, as soon as you’ve decided you want to try it, it often becomes rather daunting in your head, and for this reason, while I had purchased the materials needed to make my candles many months ago, I had put it off repeatedly. I’m so glad that I seized the opportunity yesterday. This is one of the most satisfying craft activities I’ve undertaken for a long time. Not that it was entirely straightforward of course; my kitchen is stone cold, due to being entirely unheated and the chill air meant that some of the candles cooled too quickly. This resulted in shrinkage and therefore cracking to the wax on some of my first attempts. The blighters take a good four hours to set too, so you have no way of knowing that this is the case until they’re almost finished. Still, there were a number of very successfully finished items, some of which are now available via my Etsy shop.
As I’ve previously blogged, a love of vintage is something that has been with me since a very early age. That enjoyment I hope comes across in all my posts, and encompasses a wide area of interest, from board games to random street furniture (though that’s probably a post for another day). Vintage glass though, seems to have captured my imagination more than anything else and I was pondering upon why this might be last night.
First of all, glass has got to have some of the best green credentials of any material known to (or at least created by) man. It is produced from 100% natural materials and once created, is infinitely recyclable and reusable. According to the organisation Friends of Glass, one ton of recycled glass saves 1.2 tons of raw materials, and saves 700kg of CO2 emissions. Always a good start and part of the reason that I do what I do. I’m afraid what really pleases me about vintage glass though, is much less worthy than that. It’s because it is beautiful.
I am constantly amazed by the sheer variety of colours, forms and patterns that can be found, not just in vintage glass but going back over hundreds and even thousands of years. I’m always fascinated by the painted Roman glass found in places like Vindolanda (scroll through the photos in this article to see the piece I mean) but almost equally enjoy the cheap pressed souvenir glass produced by the ton in the Victorian period. Here’s one I found earlier (inset).
Moving into the 20th century, and especially looking at Art Deco glass, the designs just explode with colour and shape. Just looking at my collection of trinket dishes (and it’s an extensive collection), virtually every one is different. I do feel I should be cataloguing all the different types, but that’s probably just the archaeologist in me.
Oranges, pinks, greens, blues, cranberry and amber, white glass and smoky glass, pressed, cut, bobbly and geometric, pedestalled, flat-bottomed, circular and square. The beauty of it is that I never know what I’m going to find the next time I step into a junk shop or call into the local car boot sale. The difficulty is, knowing when to stop!
Well – we officially have our upcycled vintage glassware on display at Worcester City Museum & Art Gallery! This time, it’s not
just a handful of items in the craft case, but a space in one of the main galleries. It’s been such an enjoyable year getting to this point, and I’ve been developing my ideas rapidly, trying new things and exploring new ways of displaying material. The Crafted for You exhibition which runs until early January, feels like a fantastic end to what has been a very busy year. I’m excited to be sharing the space with gorgeous ceramics, silver work, scrap metal sculptures, felt work and textiles. Well worth a visit (alongside the World War One: In the Words of Worcestershire People exhibition, also on now at Worcester City Museum) and one way of getting ahead with your Christmas shopping, as all items are for sale, and all unique!
Christmas comes early in the life of a crafter. We still have a whole 55 days to go as I write, but if I’m honest, I’ve been preparing for a number of weeks already. It’s the busiest time of year for my upcycled glassware, partly because I give away plenty of them myself to friends and family, but also because, they are so bright and festive-looking that they lend themselves well to Christmas fairs, candlelit house parties and the like. As a result, I have to build up rather a large amount of handcrafted items in readiness; I’m literally burning the candle at both ends!
The good news is, that following on from a successful Craft case exhibition at Worcester Museum and Art Gallery over the summer, I was invited to exhibit again as part of the annual Christmas craft showcase – Crafted For You – running from the 8th November, to early 2015. This is rather exciting as we will be upstairs in one of the main galleries alongside all sorts of other fabulous craft displays!
Three large boxes of glassware have been loaded into the car, ready for delivery, and I’m really pleased with the variety that I’m able to display. 2014 has been a year of trying new ideas and honing techniques, and I hope this will be evident in the range of quirky pieces that are being exhibited. I’ve included a few here, to give you a flavour, but would be so pleased if lots of people called in to the Art Gallery for a mooch! It’s always worth combining with a trip to the Balcony Cafe while you’re there, and of course, having a browse of the fantastic museum displays, which include archaeology, geology, natural and social history. If you’ve got young children it caters for them too, with an activity space where they can get stuck in with the Duplo or be inspired to do a bit of drawing.
Please do get in touch and let me know what you think!
Watching Kirsty’s Fill Your House for Free the other night, I was minded of some of the furniture items that I’ve produced over the past year. One of the pieces produced was a lovely new desk for a teenager’s room, with the top covered in old sheet music. I used a similar technique to upcycle this very tired old table, which I’d found in a charity shop and upcycled for a friend.
It’s all win, win as far as I’m concerned; save something from landfill,
give something to charity, produce something unique and beautiful. It’s good to see reuse of old items becoming fashionable again!
Every now and then I have a crisis of conscience when upcycling a piece of vintage glass. Occasionally, I can feel conflicted between the wish to freshen/ revive a piece that has sat unloved and dusty at the back of a charity shop shelf and the purist in me, that calls to me with pursed lips and complains at my modernisation of a perfectly usable and authentic vintage item. This conflict between my love of authentic and the need for creativity isn’t one I’ll ever fully resolve and I’m sure there are plenty of full-on vintage purists who would shudder at my flagrant disregard for the original.
That said, I like to think that I’m respecting those vintage qualities and the elements of design that make each item so unique. Over the weekend I was busily moving furniture around to accommodate my lovely new (to me) glass display cabinet and filling it with a mixture of upcycled glassware, glass awaiting the upcycle treatment and items that need no such enhancement. I think that’s the difference; it’s recognizing where an item is just downright beautiful and needs no interference.
This beautiful piece of 1930’s pink glass, is a bowl with the
impression of basketry in its moulding. Such an item needs no enhancement and I hope will soon find a new home with someone who genuinely enjoys the beauty of vintage glass. While vintage has become very fashionable in recent years, in almost all its forms, there still seems to be a lack of appreciation for 20th-century glassware. By showcasing the best of the myriad quirky shapes and forms that vintage glass takes (and upcycling some), I hope to see its renaissance!
#Everydayvintage photo collage – just a selection of images that I’ve been taking whilst out and about or upcycling at home!
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I like upcycling, repurposing and crafting with my kids
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