This beautiful vase by renown glassblower Siddy Langley is inspired by Salvia flowers in her summer garden. This most recent work of Siddy's has a sweeping forms of colour to it. The background is a rich deep purple with a distinctive crossover pattern. The flowing salvia forms are made from various shades of turquoise. This inside of the vase has a white dappled swirl pattern.
It measures 20 cm high and 13.5 cm across and is signed and dated 2010.
One of the few artists working in this exacting medium to be generally acclaimed as a master of the craft. Siddy brings to glassblowing the meticulous and rigorous discipline she inherited from her grandfather a successful paper-maker whose knowledge of the craft was so ubiquitous that he could tell from rubbing a paper between his fingers, who had made the paper and sometimes even when.
Siddy has that same dedication and discipline in her work and has spent thirty years refining her skills and techniques with endless experimentation. Siddy came to glassblowing out of a frustration with ceramics that could not be used to adequately convey what she, as an artist, wished to express. She went through an apprenticeship at the London Glassblowing Workshop.
She has explored, in her glass, the depths, colours and play of light achieved by adding traces of gold, silver and tin to the glass. The colours are all applied before the glass is blown, either by rolling through glass powders, winding on hot glass threads or the melting on of colour fragments. The designs are often further lamp-worked with canes and each is mouth-blown and shaped by hand.
Each piece is unique even if the design is one of a series. Siddy’s glasswork is translucent, and the colours have a rich, three-dimensional quality. They convey her deeply held beliefs about the richness and value of our environment and its fragility and vulnerability. Siddy is a keen diver and the glass conveys her fascination at the richness of life on the seabed
