Over the past l years, it has been ceramics that have made the backbreaking climb from lowly "arts and crafts" status into full artistic credence. These days, ceramicists can achieve total recognition as gimmicky artists and their work sells for substantial sums, while artists' ceramics of the past are also being reassessed and revalued.

Now information technology is the turn of glass. Once purely an artisan pursuit, glassmaking today is very much considered a proper art course and over the by 20 years has grown inexorably in multifariousness, sophistication and imaginative reach. Information technology's attractive to collectors considering prices are still relatively speaking affordable, and tin can begin fairly depression — although a slice by the great Czech glassmaking duo Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova was sold in 2007 for $480,000. Only and so, their astonishing geometric works — exercises in light as much as in glass itself — tin reach four metres in height and their pieces are to be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other important collections.

Jaroslava Brychtova works on glass relief 'The River of Life' in her studio, 1969 © Alamy

The Libenskys had separately begun their experiments in glass as early on as the 1940s simply began working together subsequently their marriage in the 1960s, at the same moment as in the Usa the Studio Glass movement was getting under way. Glassmakers such as Harvey Littleton, widely considered to exist the "father" of the Studio Glass move, Robert C. Fritz and others were then establishing the idea that glassmaking and blowing could be done in individual studios — rather than on the factory floor — and that unique, non-functional pieces made by a single artist could achieve the status of sculpture.

In fact the American glass artist Dale Chihuly, who began his career in the 1960s, describes himself only equally a "sculptor". With his flamboyant creations — which include the mighty snakes'-nest chandelier that hangs in the entrance hall of London's Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Yellow Chandelier in the Belfry of David museum in Jerusalem — he claims to have unequivocally moved objects in glass "into the realm of large-scale sculpture".

Studio drinking glass has not only spread across the world merely shared its name — it is now the usual term for all such pieces — and of import centres for its making range from Seattle to Canberra. In that location are museums of drinking glass across the globe, and even a non-profit group for collectors and curators called the Fine art Alliance for Gimmicky Glass, which promotes the art form in the US, and the Gimmicky Glass Guild in the Great britain.

New glassmakers are pushing the boundaries of the course equally hard equally they can. Mixing drinking glass with other materials — cane, brick, metals, wood — creates dramatic new effects, and the cross-pollination of ideas and techniques between traditional centres and the new thinking is visible in the work of most of today's artists.

Despite all this innovation, tradition remains earth-shaking in this notwithstanding relatively small earth. Many contemporary glass artists were trained in one of a few historic centres — Venice, of course, or the Czechia with its centuries-quondam history of Bohemian glass and crystal, which could be hand-cut, painted, engraved — or in places that teach the same techniques. But they are and then free to reject those traditions and experiment for themselves. Danish creative person Trine Drivsholm, for example, was trained in Venetian-style glassblowing at Seattle'due south Pilchuck School of Glass. But she says her work draws more than strongly on her Nordic cultural background.

Tobias Mohl, 10-part 'White Twill' collection, blown drinking glass with canework on a raised brass base of operations, made past the artist in Denmark © Courtesy of the artist and Adrian Sassoon

Drivsholm's work was shown at final year's Collect fair in London, which hosted 6 galleries offering studio glass. The rich studio glass scene in Scandinavia is also on display at Masterpiece online fair this week, where the work of Tobias Mohl, some other Dane, can be seen at Adrian Sassoon gallery. Mohl besides says that his work "is about using the Venetian techniques in a Scandinavian style . . . I have explored methods that break away from the traditional patterns to discover a new and more organic expression and mode." Mohl's signature pieces include the "Nest Bowl" (2019), which mixes canework with blown glass, as well as multiple displays such as his ten-part "White Twill" drove.

18th-century Venetian Girondelles with original mirror plates and polychrome glass tulip candleholders © Courtesy of Edward Hurst

Masterpiece also presents a adventure to appreciate the full historic range of glassmaking. Roman and Hellenistic drinking glass on sale includes a wonderful ring bandage from low-cal green transparent drinking glass in Greece from the 3rd-2d century BCE (at ArtAncient). At that time, drinking glass, with its calorie-free-reflecting properties, was a jewellers' material as highly regarded as precious metals. There are 18th-century Venetian girondelles (lamp holders) in polychrome glass at Edward Hurst, and several galleries such every bit WW Warner antiques offer glass pieces dating from the 17th-19th centuries.

For both devotees and novice collectors, whether it's the historic or the gimmicky that attracts you, drinking glass is a medium to reckon with.

June 24-27, masterpiecefair.com

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