I got an email some time ago from most excellent supplier of glass Creative Glass Guild who are based in Bristol. As well as informing me about the latest glass they had for sale (be still itchy fingers & please step away from my purse) it mentioned that one of my favourite glass artists Tamsin Abbott would be doing a talk there in June. It was a work day so my annual leave log had to be consulted and awesomely I had about a day to spare. A ticket was swiftly booked. So it was that I found myself on a train heading Bristol wards on Thursday morning. I’ve never been to Bristol before so had a quick look round the city (and got my cheese and onion pasty stolen by a seagull, which myself and the seagull found quite funny) before heading out to creative glass. What a treat awaited me, I’ll let the images do the talking:
After quite an expensive half an hour exploring the shelves it was time to go and choose a seat ready for Tamsin’s talk. Here is the lady herself
I was lucky enough to get a seat on the front row. Tamsin began by talking about early years (she did English rather than art which was lovely to hear) and the inspiration behind her work. She had always wanted to live in the country and when she moved there started taking photos of trees and the effect light had on the surroundings & this informed much of her early work:
Pretty early on she devised the split semi circle as a way of diving up the fore and back grounds and creating different worlds within the same scene (for example home and fields as depicted below)
(this also means that the bit of glass removed goes on to be fitted into another scene:
Playing around with semi circles also lead to a slightly more developed split
which in glass looked like this:
The final inspiration was places themselves & it was fascinating to see pictures of the places and then the finished glass pieces:
We also got peeks inside Tamsin’s studio
And the different techniques she uses to create patterns, the black lines are created my marking into black glass paint while in the below piece (one of my absolute favorites) the spirit animals are carved from a white paint (after both processes the glass is fired to 665C to ensure the decoration is permanent).
And to see the different stages of pieces of work:
As you can see one small panel takes a lot of work & goes through many metamorphoses. The final section of the talk focused on hares (which Tamsin is probably most well known for) as well as showcasing some of the commissions she had undertaken (whole windows of georgeous-ness and a very original fence!)
An illustration from Kit William’s Masquerade which Tamsin had seen as a child & many people mention that her work reminds them of.
And finally some beautiful commissions:
And of course the panels for Jackie Morris‘ fence
Stunning. All too soon the talk was over but my Bristol experience wasn’t quite complete, I hadn’t realized that Tamsin would be selling some of her work at the end of the event. I honestly only went for a look but then spotted a cat panel that was very similar indeed to our own little lion and so of course that came home with me as a lasting reminder of a great day out.
This pic doesn’t do it justice at all, its stunning!
Massive thank you’s to Tamsin for being such an amazing and engaging speaker (and for putting up with me clicking away) and creative glass guild for hosting. I leave you with one of my absolute favorite pieces from the presentation (quite different to a lot of the other panels and there was an audible gasp when it went up – the rendering of the light is amazing and really gives it a sense of drama).
