TOUCHING BASE

When making glass sculptures I am aware of how best to present the finished item. Over the years my experience has told me there are two choices. First option is a glass base which seems logical for a glass sculpture. Beauty of such bases is that they can be engraved with dates and names. Downside to this is maybe due to my lack of glass engraving training the letters can not be produced in any fancy script. The second option is to mount glass on a wooden base. If this is the favoured option then its not an issue to fix a brass plate which has been engraved (not by me) giving a more professional appearance. The later being more expensive is ideal for major presentation pieces but not suitable for small gifts for say birthdays.

I have used other material for bases such as Caithness stone and this has been drilled to accept a glass rod with the sculpture fused to it. This methos gives an interesting result in that the base becomes part of the sculpture. I had one customer who bought a sculpture from me which had a wooden base. The customer lived in Dundee and open the way home he through away my wooden base, found a nice piece of Caithness stone and drilled a hole in the stone to take the stem that the sculpture was originally standing on.

I dream of making sculptures without bases but the risk here is which way do they stand? Years ago I took a few of my sculptures to be exhibited in Wick just a few miles from my home in Thurso. However I was not allowed to set up the sculptures as this job was reserved for the experts. I did attend the opening of the exhibition only to be shocked in seeing my glass displayed upside down! This happened recently but thankfully not to me. I was setting up a small exhibition of work by seventeen artists one of which had submitted a glass sculpture. None of the three gallery attendants had any idea which way up this piece should be viewed. I contacted the artists and she explained that it was signed on the bottom so that must be the base, right? Sometimes things just look so much better the right way up. This is not always the case though.

I made an abstract sculpture that could be displayed in a variety of ways and to be honest it was important. I designed it to be seen in a more upright position yet it had a wobble. Try as I might I could not remove the wobbliness and decided to lay the work on its side. Wow the piece took on a new life and I go see it in a completely different way. Following on from this amazing discovery I have tried making work that just consists of bases.

Taking an easily understood object such as a wine glass then I reckon everyone will know where the base is of a wine glass. Yep, at the bottom supporting the stem and bowl. But if, and I have, made two wine glasses joined end to end but without a so called spun base then the bowl of one wine glass becomes the base of the other. Simple and yet complex.

Finally a word of warning to any budding glass artists out there who want to fix a piece of glass to a wooden base. Don’t fit glass into a hole of the base so tight that it cant move. There has to be some slack. I normally use 6mm diameter glass tubing or rod as a stem attached to a sculpture but if I was to slot it into a hole in a wooden base then I would (or should that be wood?) drill a hole 6.25mm diameter. Over a period of time the wood will expand to clamp onto the glass like a vice and crack the glass. If the slack is too much to bear then one can wrap some clear tape around the glass stem to cushion the connection.