By Katie Dominy / 20-05-2010

'Glass Skin' was displayed at Sotheby's, London last week in limited editions of six. The exhibition coincided with Collect, the English fair dedicated to design.

Eindhoven-based Kiki van Eijk and Joost van Bleiswijk were introduced to Murano-glass manufacturer Adriano Berengo, also president of Venice Projects, by UK curator Janice Blackburn. The designers were invited by Venice Projects to visit the Berengo Studio 1989 furnaces in Murano, Italy in January 2010, which resulted in each designer producing a new collection from glass, completed in only four months.

Drink! Eat! Fun! Rest! Think! Dream! Love! by Kiki van Eijk consists of seven pieces, each a symbol of one of the seven essentials of life. Van Eijk explains that, "they symbolize the most beautiful and honest things in life that we often tend to forget in today's hectic world we're living in."

The glass objects have been hand-produced and assembled, using layers of different traditional techniques such as filigrane, mother of pearl, incalmo, and mirroring. Each of the pieces is crafted with its own characteristic strong colour, a key feature of Murano glass, and is devised as a contemporary take on a still life, complete with an emotional as well as a usable function.

Dream!is explained by van Eijk as an essential - "To dream or to have a dream is the most enchanting phenomena in life. This is what makes it a paradise." The work features Venetian canal greens with blue and consists of a wire-structured upside down basket base, upon which sits a mirrored bottle that spouts transparent turquoise bubbles.

The traditional ceramic amphora storage jar and primitive drinking vessels inspired the watery-green Drink! vase. Van Eijk tells us: "This object symbolizes 'drinking' which is of paramount importance in order to stay alive. Our body consists of 70% water. But still, during a hectic day, we almost forget to drink enough!' Eat! is represented by a 'totem' of kitchen objects in rich blue tones; a side table and stewing pot holding up a giant glass ladle. A vertically-set metallic trumpet with a balloon hovering above its mouth symbolises Fun!

Joost van Bleiswijk's Glass Stacks have an architectural and religious appearance and are fashioned in amber-coloured glass with an inner mirror coating that gives a sumptuous gold finish. The 'stacking' style comes from Van Bleiswijk's aim of simplifying shapes around us and in some way, turning them into cubes and combinations of lines. Everyday shapes are built up to create forms that have strong dramatic appeal - secular - but with overtones of Venice's rich Catholic traditions of icons and religious reliquaries.

Adriano Berengo notes: "With this initiative directed at design, Venice Projects has demonstrated its understanding of how cross-pollination between genres is a distinctively contemporary element as well as an opportunity to create new creative harmonies and synergies." Curator Janice Blackburn comments: "The work is outstanding in both creativity and technical skill. It's very complex work (glass appears like wood, the glass ‘pillows’ etc). Nothing was straight forward and it’s a real credit to them and to the glass blowers who are some of the best in the business. They rose to the challenge doing things they hadn’t done before." 

The 'Glass Skin' exhibition at Sotheby's took place alongside a showcase of graduate work from the Design Academy Eindhoven. Venice Projects will present 'Glass Skin' at Design Miami/Basel this coming June.

Main image & images 1-3: Kiki van Eijk
Images 4-7: Joost van Bleiswijk

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