It provides shelter, items essential to daily life, and so much beauty. We take a deep dive into the crystal-clear, cutting-edge fields of glass design, architecture and art.

2022 was the United Nations’ International Year of Glass. Who knew? For this unexpected celebration, the global organisation hailed the material’s countless uses – from the optical fibres that keep the internet going to storing Covid vaccines. Glass sheets are essential to solar cells; telescope glass optics help scientists study the universe; and, of course, there’s glass art and its ability to show the full colour spectrum.

IT’S ALL IN THE PAST

Glass is integral to technology today, but the sand-based material has a long history. There is naturally occurring volcanic glass such as obsidian, but the earliest examples of humans manufacturing glass date to 3500 BC in Egypt and eastern Mesopotamia.

Closer to home, the study of glass beads uncovered in archaeological excavations tells us a lot about our history. In March 2022, the Origins Centre in Joburg held an exhibition entitled “Navigating the past through glass beads”. It examined African east coast trade routes, and our historic glass-bead industry. “Glass beads have been imported into southern and eastern Africa for at least 1 000 years, mostly landing at ports on the east coast before being traded inland,” says Origins Centre curator Tammy Hodgskiss Reynard. Glass artist Martli Jansen van Rensburg and her team at Smelt Glass Studio created an installation for the event, paying homage to glass beads and their importance in South Africa.

WE SEE THE FUTURE

Yes, Saudi Arabia’s new mega-development NEOM seems like something out of a dystopian novel. A major component of the project is The Line, a future city that will accommodate nine- million people and be built on just 34 square kilometres. By offering an approach to urban planning called “Zero Gravity Urbanism”, city functions will be layered vertically. The Line will be set within a jaw-dropping glass wall (two huge horizontal skyscrapers) stretching across the desert.

STAIN ON MANKIND

Stained glass is mostly associated with grand cathedral windows or iconic lamps made by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Putting tradition aside, though, there are some amazing artists reinterpreting this coloured-glass art form.

Tom Fruin is a contemporary American sculptor known for his large-scale steel and Plexiglass installations. He created his first public sculpture, Watertower, in 2012 to pay homage to the rooftop water towers synonymous with New York. His 2022 exhibition “From Sea to Shining Sea” was a salute to the 10-year anniversary of Watertower, which is still visible from Pier 17 in the Big Apple. One of the artworks on display, titled Hi 5 Taxi Cab, was composed of actual city signage advertising a now-demolished taxi depot and repair garage. The work was inspired by another iconic sculpture on view from Pier 17 – the Statue of Liberty, with her hand raised, not unlike a high-five, in a playful reference to the hailing of a New York City taxi cab.

Umtata-born artist Athi-Patra Ruga is well known for engaging with themes of queerness, generational trauma and liberation. Although he creates videos and costumes too, his 2020 exhibition “Interior/Exterior / Dramatis Personae”, shown at WHATIFTHEWORLD in Cape Town, focused on tapestries and an array of exquisite stained-glass works.

BLOW BY BLOW

Perhaps due in part to the Netflix series Blown Away, the popularity of glass blowing is on the rise. The heat, the science, the drama and romance – who knew it could be so addictive?

Glass blowing is a technique where molten glass is shaped by blowing into it, using a pipe and other tools. The Tshwane University of Technology is the only tertiary institution on the African continent that offers training in this discipline. Martli Jansen van Rensburg is a lecturer at the university, as well as an artist and director of Smelt Glass Studio, the only open-access glass-blowing studio in the country. She explains that the process of glass blowing and sculpting is like a dance: “It takes total focus. You use both arms, and your whole body. With the help of an assistant, you blow, squash and pull the glass. It takes 20 minutes to an hour to make a piece – and you need to keep it liquid until you’re happy. Then you stop and freeze it in time.”

A Glacier vase and polished objet by South African artist David Reade.

David Reade, one of South Africa’s pre-eminent glass blowers, works out of his studio in Cape Town, where he creates both sculptural and functional work from “true Cape sand”. Working among hot furnaces since he was a teenager, his objets d’art are sumptuous, gem-like pieces, containing swirls of colour that delicately catch the light.

THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT

Conservatories (or greenhouses) perfectly illustrate the functionality and beauty of glass. It’s the key element in these transparent buildings, which give lush greenery from around the world an opportunity to grow out of season and far from home.

The Jewel Box in Forest Park, St Louis, in the US was built in 1936, but recently received a $3.5-million refurbishment. This superb example of Art Deco design has unconventional cantilevered, vertical glass walls that rise majestically.

London’s brutalist Barbican complex is, in fact, home to the second-largest conservatory in the city. Designed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, it opened to the public in 1984 and boasts more than 2 000 species of plants. It is a lush, tropical oasis in an often cold and grey environment.

PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN GLASS HOUSES

The Glass House in Connecticut, designed by architect Philip Johnson in 1949, is a recognised US National Trust Site. Inspired by Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, the Glass House is simple but perfectly proportioned. The entire structure is surrounded by clear glass panels that reflect the surrounding trees and scenery.

“I thought it’d be nice to have a place where you could swivel all the way around and see the whole place, which is what you can do here,” said Johnson said of the house in 1991. “I claim it’s the only house in the world where you can see the sunset and the moonrise at the same time, standing in the same spot.”

SANTAMBROGIOMILANO is an Italian company that specialises in boundary-breaking glass design. Its projects include La Terrazza, a private home in Milan, with a set of pergolas and outdoor furniture made entirely of glass to allow for unobstructed city views. But we think it’s the company’s most recent undertaking that really dazzles: The Glass House will be constructed in Switzerland, and will boast three transparent floors made entirely of glass. According to the company, “It will be like living in a forest, where climbing the glass stairs will make you feel like you are climbing high into the treetops.”

Casa Biblioteca, or Library House, was created in 2015 by Matteo Arnone and Pep Pons (formerly of Atelier Branco) as a temporary haven for a client to think and read. It’s situated in the small town of Vinhedo near São Paulo, and is made of in-situ cast concrete, steel, garapa wood – and a whole lot of glass. The open space is defined by varying elevations and almost entirely wrapped in a glazed facade with iron profiling. The architects were inspired by a local architectural movement of the 1950s known as “the Paulistano tradition”, which embraced concrete structures and heavier massing.

Belgian firm Jo Taillieu Architecten has worked on several interesting glass projects, but one stands out. Paddenbroek is a rural education centre that focuses on nature, agriculture and tourism. Using an original farmhouse structure, the site metamorphosed after the house was dismantled, and glass and steel were added around it to maximise the flexibility and use of space. The goal was to design a generous building that could provide comfort in all weather conditions.

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Local homeware and furniture brand La Grange Interiors has added an exclusive collection of mouth-blown glassware to its offering.

This ancient art has been practised over centuries as a highly technical form of vessel and ornament making.

From vases to candle holders, each piece is distinctly unique, with new colours and styles being introduced regularly.

Many of the latest additions have been created by European glassware brand Dutz.

The glassware collection is available at both the Cape Town and Johannesburg La Grange showrooms.

Visit lagrangeinteriors.co.za to see the full range.

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London-based designer and expert glass blower Laura Smith creates intricate hand-blown lighting and decorative pieces from glass.

Laura, who grew up on the island of Bermuda, combines vibrant tones layered with precious metals in her collection of lights and vessels.

The look and feel of the Laura Elizabeth Glass creations mimic natural occurrences such as waves, flowing waterfalls and storms. Her lighting range is inspired by glass that’s smoothed by the sea and crashing sand. “We developed the idea to soften the surface of the glass with sandblasting and a copper patina or verdigris on the surface of the glass to evoke the gorgeous textures of the ocean,” she says on her website.

She also designs shimmering, hot-cast door handles that are shaped in order to direct light towards the glowing copper sealed within the glass.

For more information, visit lauraelizabethglass.com.

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A few members of the VISI team journeyed to Swaziland to celebrate the 30th birthday of Woolworths supplier Ngwenya Glass. The event culminated in a collaborative workshop with top international glassblowers and talented local designers.

Glass-blowing is silent poetry with a rhythm that only a skilled few can capture. In the Ngwenya Glass factory, a group of Swazi craftspeople work together to breathe life into what was once simply shards of recycled glass, without using a word to communicate.

They do this by way of a ritualistic rhythm that, at first sight, appears disorderly. But there’s method to the madness. Orbs of molten glass fixed to steel rods come out of the approximately 1 200°C furnace, hot and hissing, resembling glowing bulbs. Blow by blow, a worker inflates the molten glass into a hollow bubble, subsequently (and speedily) passing it to another worker, who then starts shaping it with nothing but mounds of wet newspaper – and a skilled rhythm. Finally, another group takes over, fashioning it into its final form.

Thirty years ago, the owner of Ngwenya Glass, Chas Prettejohn, bought a liquidated factory, Swazi Glass, with his late father Richard and mother Alix. “We didn’t know a thing about glass at the time,” says Chas, “so we set out to find the factory’s former employees.”

First they tracked down its production manager, Sibusiso Mhlanga, to help restart the business. “I was sceptical at first, because Chas didn’t know anything about glass,” says Sibusiso. “He asked me to teach the guys.”

Thanks to Sibusiso, one of Ngwenya’s master glass-blowers who trained in Sweden under Jan-Erik Ritzman, the glass-manufacturing hub was revived. Chas’s wife Cathy joined the team soon after acquisition, and together they have run the business for the past 20 years. Over three decades, Ngwenya Glass has grown from 4 to 70 employees. Every product is individually crafted by hand, requiring about 12 workers to produce, for instance, a single wine glass or a popular animal figurine.

“Glass is me, my family, my story,” says Davide Salvadore, a glassblower from Italy’s Murano, whose family has been working with glass since the 1650s. Davide was one of five international glass-blowers, with James Devereux (UK), Tim Shaw (Australia), Richard Price and Marco Lopulalan (both from the Netherlands), who attended the workshop.

Peter Bremers, glass designer and sculptor from the Netherlands, was also in attendance, as well as local designers Katy Taplin and Adriaan Hugo from Dokter and Misses, Laurie Wiid van Heerden from Wiid Design, Schanè Anderson and Debbie Steinhobel from Olàlà! Interiors, Joe Paine from Joe Paine Design, and Gerhard Swart from Ceramic Matters.

“Very few top South African designers have had the opportunity to work with glass,” says Chas. “One of the main objectives of the workshop was to educate them in the medium of glass and to showcase what Ngwenya is capable of producing.” Apart from collaborating with Peter Bremers to potentially produce a new range of tableware, Chas says there are plans in the pipeline to collaborate with the aforementioned local designers to produce either new signature Ngwenya Glass pieces or to exclusively manufacture the designers’ own products. So, although some say glass-blowing is a dying art, the folk at Ngwenya – and their collaborators – continue dancing to the (silent) beat of the glass.

The Glass Is Greener

• Ngwenya products are made by hand using only recycled glass, which comes from various sources but mainly members of the community, who are paid for it.
• The furnace, which requires 700 litres of fuel per 24 hours, is fuelled with a combination of old KFC oil and motor oil.
• Ngwenya uses recycled newspaper as protective covers in the making of their glass and to wrap their products.
• Only exotic wood is used to make moulds.
• The Ngwenya factory has 550 solar panels.
• The company uses rainwater and grey water in production, considerably reducing potable-water consumption.

Take a look at the Woolies Studio.w Ngwenya Glass Curve range.

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