A Journey to Select the Glass

Nathalie Hildegarde Liege
Mar 10, 2017
5 min read

Updated: Mar 12, 2018

It was time to select the glass!

Lamberts Glas many samples to guide their customers in their choices.

Very few 'no'_ many 'maybe'_ two 'Yes' it has to be.

The choice of glass textures or colours was well advanced. The participants and I did some of it as the workshops took place.

I have to stay true to the meanings of the colour scheme we all discussed, even if I have to alter some of the choices made to keep the budget right.

I made all efforts to have our colours/textures/patterns harmony kept, at the same time as reducing the number of glass panes purchased to seven.

I have an allocated budget for this new order which also is inclusive of the special reduction because of the generous sponsorship by Lamberts Glas of this project.

I also have to bear in mind which glass I have in stock at my studio that will be used for this design.

I travelled to Germany by train at the lower cost of the European InterRail ticket .

If one travels from Shrewsbury to an airport, and an airport to Waldsassen, it is all much better to take the train with an afternoon/evening in London.

It was just about time to view the Paul Nash exhibition thinking of the next commission I discussed and had a meeting just before this journey. It is for the Royal Air Force Centenary Anniversary. Hopefully it will be the next #journal.

I worked on my iPad as I travelled, enjoyed chatting in German now and then with the passengers sitting by me.

The peak times of the Lamberts Glas day were my all inspiring hours at their very special heritage building and as I was in the train leaving Marktredwitz.

I had left the site all infatuated (nearly flying) by the privilege of the superb mouth blown glass I had purchased all advised by a knowledgeable gentleman sales director Manfred Mislik who placed it all in this 'trolley'.

My 'trolley' at its very early stage.

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The memories for ever

At my arrival, 15th February 2017!

Robert Christ, Vice President, took me the closest possible to the masters of the trade all hard at work, mouth blowing and shaping the glass.

I filmed as I listened to Robert.

Fire, furnaces, agile moves of heavy metal rods, shaping, blowing, the synchronisation of bodies complementary one to an other, all fast, a rhythm and pace to keep.

A glass blowing pace and agile power of the craftsmen I wished to keep as true as possible in the film.

It will be hard to cut my glass without the memory of what I followed all live for about two hours.

The glass has been delivered to my studio since then and the handling has never been so 'loving and measured'!

KAE Films edited my films. Guest Artist for the project #margaandcollections #artscouncilengland.

KAE Films is usually the one on site filming me in the making process of this stained glass project. (vimeo.com/user49985738)

PACE & PANES

For my departure.

I had the delight of the company of a retired jolly lady who chose to come by me maybe because I smiled from my sit, my head turned towards her when she had entered the coach. She knew she had someone to make a conversation with.

She was as chatty as my granny Claudinette was, same vivacity of mind one will read in her cheeks. For the most, like my granny, her ancestors had worked in the trade of glass.

But even better in the skilful trade of mouth blown glass. She was confident, all very proud too, it had been a local skill for generations Czechs and Germans neighbours worked at together.

She knew all of the filmed skills I was displaying on my camera. Of the mouth blown glass technique for stained glass art, she approved all what I shared with her.

Her neighbour at home was a stained artist too! At Regensburg, we parted as if we'd known each other well. She waved goodbye behind the window when her train left the station, me waiting all in contempt for my next journey.

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Marga & Collections' glass panes and colours.

I took two books in my luggage.

I did find the quiet times to read.

I opened Outrun first.

The job the character does for the RSPB speaks for a bond anyone may live with wild life UK birds, It refers to the lists the children and I worked from at the workshop A Touch of Glass.

To my surprise it inspired me for the cartoon's upper skies beyond the hills and the glass I had to select from the stocks at Lambert Glas.

A glass for this Noctulicent Cloud in a deep night blue.

Amy Liptrot's character of her novel The Outrun ( page 90, Canongate 2016 ) learnt to identify clouds and thinks:

"I become interested in a fairly recently discovered meteorological phenomenon: noctilucent cloud, literally 'night shining', the highest and one of the rarest types, drifting in the upper atmosphere. Unlike most cloud it is made of ice crystals rather than water droplets. It's usually invisible but just after the sunset around midsummer, in deep twilight, the tilt of the earth allows it to catch the last light of the sun. Sometimes known as 'space cloud', its first recorded observation was in 1885, tow years after the eruption of Krakatoa. It could be that the ice crystals have formed around specks of dust _ from volcanoes, meteors or space-shuttle exhausts. I like the idea of pollution creating something beautiful."

The character likes "the idea of pollution creating something beautiful".

Likewise, all young participants of the first workshop still wished to present the ambiguity of our reading of Nature or our environments, the odd source of new visuals we all commonly may encounter in the media, photographic materials or where we live each day straight before our eyes.

Something that we may read "creating something beautiful" in our mind, even if we know how it puts wild life and humanity at risk.

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Blacks and depth of woods, like Margaret Agnes Rope depicted

the duality of attraction and repulsion of the woods and their mysteries.