TRADITION MEETS CONTEMPORARY
GLASS ENGRAVING NETWORK
It is with the deepest sadness we announce that Nancy Sutcliffe died Tuesday, September 23 after a brief but courageous fight with blood cancer. Lovely, lively, witty, she was a great glass engraver, as we remember from these images.
We will all miss her so very much for her amazing work, her wonderful sense of humour and all the support that she and Dennis have given GEN over the years. Our heartfelt condolences go out to Dennis, Ferielle (Mimi) and Chris at this sad time.
GLASRIJK Tubbergen began as a daring experiment. An art event in a village in Twente, replacing the legendary motorcycle road races. It has since grown into one of the leading glass art events in Northwest Europe. Every year, for four days, Tubbergen transforms into the glass art capital of the Netherlands and far beyond.
In 2025, GLASRIJK will celebrate its 29th edition and welcome its 900th participating artist. This anniversary year is special for GEN: for the first time, we will be participating in GLASRIJK.
GEN members in action
All Dutch GEN members will be present:
Also joining us will be German master engraver Wilhelm Vernim. Together, we present a wide range of contemporary glass engravings and invite the public to experience this unique craft firsthand.
Demonstrations and Education
GEN provides daily glass engraving demonstrations. On Thursdays and Fridays, we also welcome approximately 150 schoolchildren from Tubbergen. They have the opportunity to try their hand at glass engraving: each child can engrave their own glass slide and experience the magic of glassworking.
Visitors to GLASRIJK are also invited to try their hand at engraving. A unique opportunity to literally get their hands on this rare craft.
LILLIPUT Museum
A special highlight is Wilhelm Vernim’s LILLIPUT Museum. It showcases small, delicate engraved works created by GEN members from across Europe. This intimate collection offers visitors a rare glimpse into the diversity and richness of contemporary glass engraving.
GLASRIJK 2025 takes place from October 2nd to 5th in the center of Tubbergen, the Netherlands.
Gravur on Tour – the title says it all!
Because for the past 13 years, exhibitions devoted to engraved glass have been held under this title in museums and glass centres throughout Europe. They are organised at regular intervals by the Glass Engraving Network, or GEN for short. The international network’s declared aim is to showcase outstanding contemporary works in engraved glass in order to draw attention to how – despite, or because, of its long tradition – glass engraving is still very much a living, magical and inspiring art form.
The idea of founding a network for glass engravers was born in 2012 in the Bavarian glassmaking centre of Frauenau, where the artists Katharine Coleman, Wilhelm Vernim and Norbert Kalthoff met while attending summer school. They quickly got to talking about the decline of glass engraving as a discipline at European schools and universities. In antiquity as well as modern times, masterfully engraved glass was an expensive and coveted luxury item, but it seemed as though its long success story had waned toward the end of the twentieth century. To improve these bleak future prospects, the three artists instantly decided to form an organisation that would show the world how glass engraving traditions have in fact long been a part of modern artistic practice.
As an open, virtual network, GEN has ever since then been bringing together artists who want to give glass engraving a fresh impetus in the context of contemporary glass art. Through its exhibition programme, workshops and meetings, GEN promotes ongoing artistic and technical exchanges that contribute to advances in engraving, cutting and other glass finishing methods. These activities spotlight the enormous creative potential for contemporary art offered by traditional cold-working techniques.
The current exhibition at the Glasmuseum Lette demonstrates just how successful GEN’s efforts have been. It is an honour for us to host this Europe-wide exhibition project. And it’s going to be exciting to see how around 40 artists from 10 countries apply their individual formal language to exploring a wide range of artistic concepts and styles. Most of the works are no more than two years old, and many were even created especially for this exhibition. One thing is certain: glass engraving never stands still but is constantly on the move – on tour!
Our exhibition “Gravur on Tour: Gernheim 2023” opens at 3pm on 19th March at the LWL-Industriemuseum Glashütte Gernheim, Petershagen, Germany, showing the work of some 45 glass artists from Finland, Estonia, Czechia, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Romania, Ireland, Scotland and England. The exhibition runs till 9th September when all are equally welcome to the Finnissage Party!
There is an illustrated catalogue of work by all the artists on sale from the 19th at the museum for 15 Euros. The three graal workshops running alongside the exhibition are already fully booked but there is an engraving class for 6-8 persons from 22-27 August run by Wilhelm Vernim in English and German. More info from: glashuette-gernheim@lwl.org
Bild-Werk Frauenau mourns the loss of a person whose passion was glass: Sissi Zizlsperger, a long-time board member and leader of the “Galerie am Museum”, died on March 31, 2020 at the age of only 63. She fought cancer with her own optimism, but ultimately she lost her battle. It is particularly sad that Sissi’s death came at a time of social isolation due to the Corona crisis. Contacts with other people were always vital to her. With her passing, the glass scene in the Bavarian Forest and the international scene have lost their communicative heart.
Sissi Zizlsperger was a gifted networker. She knew how to bring people together, – young, unknown artists as well as established artists from the region and around the world. Her enthusiasm for glass and the people who made it in a variety of ways was inspiring. She created opportunities for exhibitions and encounters and, with her warmth and hospitality, made the guests feel welcome.
Sissi Zizlsperger came to Bild-Werk in 2005 as an intern. From the same year she was appointed to the “Eisch-Atelier” and the artist-in-residence program, which brought international artists to Frauenau to work creatively with the glassmakers from the Eisch glassworks. Before that she had worked in the Glass Museum in Passau, where the entrepreneur Georg Höltl had installed the world’s largest collection of Bohemian glass. During this time, Sissi developed a love for this fascinating material. Then, in Frauenau, she entered a particularly creative glass environment, where the new Frauenau Glass Museum had just opened. In Tom’s Hall, on the site of the former glass king Isidor Gistl, Bild-Werk Frauenau had established itself from 1987 as a non-profit educational institution and cultural initiative that was developed from impulses by Erwin Eisch, and from the connections of the regional glass scene to the International Studio Glass Movement. Participants from all over the world came to the courses at the Summer Academies, and Sissi Zizlsperger was open to everyone. She engaged in the Board of Directors of Bild-Werk Frauenau (from 2008 to 2011 as the chairwoman) and brought in her ideas and put many suggestions into practice. The summer academy and the “Gallery at the Museum” complemented each other perfectly. The traveling exhibition “50 Artists – 50 Vases”, which she co-organized, is still seen as one of the most creative actions to this day.
Sissi will be remembered by all of us within Bild-Werk with her zest for action, her community spirit and her always interested and excited manner. We would love to be there when the many friends she has in Frauenau and far beyond hold her in memory with a big party in better times to come: Sissi Zizlsperger, the fighter with a big heart for people and for glass.
The European Museum of Modern Glass will be closed to the public from Saturday 14 March to 19 April 2020. Reopening in April is very uncertain. Even if they will be allowed to open, larger events will not be possible.
The museum will start the BACK ON TOUR exhibition without an exhibition opening. The museum will fully prepare and build the exhibition over the next few weeks. They want to shoot a film tour of the exhibition and provide the public with a digital online offer.
The exhibition has not been canceled and the museum hope that they can reopen as soon as possible. There will be more information when things are getting clear
Upcoming exhibition „Back on Tour“ will be held at the European Museum of Modern Glass in Rödental. This museum is part of the art collections of the Veste Coburg.
Formal opening of „Back on Tour“ at 6.30pm on Thursday 7th May
The Finissage is on Saturday, 8th November 2020
“The new Back on Tour exhibition in the European Museum of Modern Glass means the Coburg audience will be introduced to the art of contemporary glass engraving and cutting in all its forms for the first time. Work by 43 artists will provide a comprehensive insight into their art and working methods; noteworthy are the variety of exhibited works, the different artistic approaches and the countless stories that can be discovered in thes objects. I am delighted to be able to exhibit thes works of art and I hope that the Glass Engraving Network, which has been very active for several years, will receive the attention it deserves”.
Sven Hauschke, Director Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg and Curator Works of Art.
The Scottish Gallery welcomes back Nancy Sutcliffe for her second solo exhibition. DNA is a personal exploration of the common genetic heritage of living things and our origin in the stars. Nancy’s wheel and drill engraved glass pieces are highly detailed and are gilded with 24ct gold, caplain gold and palladium leaf.
“I became a glass engraver after a career as a scientific and medical illustrator. I find I have come full circle and my subject matter today is informed by that training in precision and attention to naturalistic detail. I use a handheld drill in much the same way as I used to use a pencil though now, using diamonds and stones, I am able to carve deeply into the crystal bringing the illusion of 3D.
For this new collection, I have taken inspiration from the beauty and complexity of gene sequencing charts, the cosmos, and the species of plants and animals that share our world. The pieces here trace the connections between organisms through our shared DNA; the focus is on the similarities between a seemingly diverse collection of cells, plants and animals, all constructed from the same chemical building blocks, all related.”
Click for the beautiful catalogue. https://issuu.com/scottishgallery/docs/dna_lookbook_2020_hires
‘A Fine Line’, a solo show of work by Katharine Coleman MBE has been held at the Scottish Gallery in November 2019. It featured eleven new works inspired by the many locations Katharine has visited to teach glass engraving over the past decade; from Upstate New York to Beijing and back home again. Each example is a personal memory of the place and her own art journey, which has since the 1980s been dedicated to glass engraving.
Click for the beautiful catalogue. https://issuu.com/scottishgallery/docs/katharine_coleman_a_fine_line_catalogue_november_2
The Glass Engraving Network is back on tour. We are pleased to share with you the online catalogue of over 40 international artist’s work.
Please click on the image and read about the history of the network and view the exhibits.
The exhibition finished at the Suomen Lasimuseo (Finnish Glass Museum) Riihimäki on 31th december 2019 and will travel to the Europäisches Museum für Modernes Glas Rödental, Coburg, Germany in the spring of 2020.