By Susanne K. Frantz
Museum of Glass
Tacoma, Washington
www.museumofglass.org
University of Washington Press
Seattle, Washington
$50

When Lino Tagliapietra arrived at the Pilchuck Glass School as a visiting artist in the summer of 1979, it was exactly the right time for studio glass and himself, as Susanne Frantz describes it in this companion book to the touring retrospective of the artist at the Museum of Glass (through August 24). At 45, he had been working in the glass factories in his native Murano, Italy, since he was 11 years…

Jul. 1, 2008 | 0 Comments

Glass  

By David Whitehouse
Corning Museum of Glass
$29.95

“Visitors to our museums are frequently unaware that glass has been manufactured for thousands of years, and they marvel at the objects that were made as early as the second millennium B.C. They are also unaware that many of the techniques used to fashion glass into beautifully decorated shapes have been in existence since at least the first century B.C.” So write Michael Brand, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum and David Whitehouse, executive director of the Corning Museum of…

Jul. 1, 2008 | 0 Comments

Glass  

Over the weekend of June 13th I spent about 8 hours at the 4th Annual Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn, braving lashing rain, beating sun, an onslaught of hipsters and the impulse to buy many (sometimes too) cute things. I went on Saturday with a friend studying fashion design at FIT grad school, who walked away with vibrant screenprints and silkscreened t-shirts. My interests lie mostly in makers using vintage and raw materials but there were also many colorful designs, with an alarming proclivity toward octopi…

Jun. 17, 2008 | 0 Comments

Ceramics   Conferences   Design   Enamels   Fashion   Furniture   Glass   Metal   Mixed Media   Sculpture   Travel   Wood  

After four days of frenzied crowds at the Eleventh Annual Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Fair (SOFA) at the Park Avenue Armory in New York—opening night alone drew over 2,600 people—visiting the exhibition on Sunday, June 1, the final day, was an unexpectedly calming experience. No longer were there throngs pushing past each other rushing to stake claims on one must-have piece or another. Rather, people stood in small groups or by themselves, some speaking quietly with artists and gallery owners, others…

Jun. 2, 2008 | 0 Comments

Book Arts   Ceramics   Design   Enamels   Fiber/Textile   Furniture   Glass   Jewelry   Lectures   Metal   Mixed Media   Sculpture   tiles   Wood  

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Tyler Hays is the founder and owner of the unconventional furniture and design company BDDW. On May 15th he helped launch the American Craft Council’s “Summer in the City Salon Series” with an engrossing look at how the company got started and what the future has in store for them. Along the way the capacity crowd learned about BDDW’s unique approach to design and how that has shaped the culture of the entire company and in the end, help create a business…

May. 20, 2008 | 1 Comment

Architecture   Furniture   Symposia   Wood  

Viktor Schreckengost, one of the greatest industrial designers of the 20th century, died January 26 in Tallahassee, Florida, at 101 years old. Seem­ingly every aspect of modern American life was touched by the millions of items manufactured from Schreckengost designs, from dinnerware, bicycles, and children’s pedal cars to printing presses and a radar recognition system for the U.S. Navy. He was also an accomplished potter, painter and sculptor, noted for his iconic Art Deco ceramic Jazz bowls of the 1930s.

He believed in making…

May. 19, 2008 | 0 Comments

Architecture   Book Arts   Design   Fiber/Textile   Glass