Summer Open House at London Glassblowing

Looking for inspirational things to do this summer? Then consider a visit to Summer Open House at premier hot glass studio and studio glass gallery, London Glassblowing. From 26th July until 4th August, visitors will be treated to complimentary refreshments as they browse the extraordinary glasswork exhibited (and for sale) in the gallery. Open House featured artists are international glass artist and London Glassblowing founder, Peter Layton and emerging artist, Hanne Enemark whose work is already making waves in the glass art world. Anyone wishing to experience the heat and magic of the ancient craft of glassblowing will be invited into the studio at the rear of the gallery where there will be regular demonstrations by the London Glassblowing team.

With a magnificent body of work to his name, and a career spanning 36 years as preeminent glassmaker, Peter Layton’s reputation for translating subtle painterly qualities and bold colours in hot glass is long established. Recent glass series, which draw inspiration from painters, Hodgkin, Gauguin and Hockney, are ‘Paradiso’, ‘Tahiti’ and ‘Arrival of Spring’; the latter produced in collaboration with the Royal Academy to coincide with the recent Hockney exhibition.

At Summer Open House Layton presents two new artist-inspired series, this time developed in association with the National Gallery: ‘Wheatfield’, from A Wheatfield, with Cypresses by Vincent van Gogh and ‘Turner’ from The Fighting Temeraire’ by Joseph Mallord Turner. In ‘Wheatfield’, Layton captures the visual, textural and tactile qualities of the original painting; the vast contorted skyline and colour, movement and vitality of the wheat remarkably portrayed in three-dimensional glass. In ‘Turner’ Layton achieves a painterly rendering of the strong yellow, umbers of the sunset that dominates the work, using the piercing blue of the skyline as counterpoint.

Born in Seoul in 1980, raised in Denmark and now London-based, Hanne Enemark completed her MA in glass and ceramics at the Royal College of Art in 2010. Quickly gaining recognition, Enemark was awarded a 2012 Elle Decoration New Designer award; this year she is a nominee for the prestigious Perrier-Jouët Arts Salon Prize.

Captivated by the perception of minerals and metals, Enemark mimics their inherent visual tensions in glass to amplify the contrast between such diametrical opposites as hard/soft, sharp/smooth and heavy/light. New work for London Glassblowing’s Summer Open House will include Fields of Gold, a group of vessels decorated with golden grass, realised in her trademark muted gold-platinum-metallic colour palette.