Glass art in the context of "Cage cup"

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⭐ Core Definition: Glass art

Glass art refers to individual works of art that are substantially or wholly made of glass. It ranges in size from monumental works and installation pieces to wall hangings and windows, to works of art made in studios and factories, including glass jewelry and tableware.

As a decorative and functional medium, glass was extensively developed in Egypt and Assyria. Glassblowing was perhaps invented in the 1st century BC, and featured heavily in Roman glass, which was highly developed with forms such as the cage cup for a luxury market. Islamic glass was the most sophisticated of the early Middle Ages. Then the builders of the great Norman and Gothic cathedrals of Europe took the art of glass to new heights with the use of stained glass windows as a major architectural and decorative element. Glass from Murano, in the Venetian Lagoon, (also known as Venetian glass) is the result of hundreds of years of refinement and invention. Murano is still held as the birthplace of modern glass art.

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Glass art in the context of Stained glass window

Stained glass refers to coloured glass as a material or art and architectural works created from it. Although it is traditionally made in flat panels and used as windows, the creations of modern stained glass artists also include three-dimensional structures and sculpture. Modern vernacular usage has often extended the term "stained glass" to include domestic lead light and objets d'art created from glasswork, for example in the famous lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany.

As a material stained glass is glass that has been coloured by adding metallic salts during its manufacture. It may then be further decorated in various ways. The coloured glass may be crafted into a stained-glass window, say, in which small pieces of glass are arranged to form patterns or pictures, held together (traditionally) by strips of lead, called cames or calms, and supported by a rigid frame. Painted details and yellow-coloured silver stain are often used to enhance the design. The term stained glass is also applied to enamelled glass in which the colors have been painted onto the glass and then fused to the glass in a kiln.

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Glass art in the context of Vase

A vase (/vs/, /vz/, or /vɑːz/) is an open container. It can be made from a number of materials, such as ceramics, glass, non-rusting metals, such as aluminium, brass, bronze, or stainless steel. Even wood has been used to make vases, either by using tree species that naturally resist rot, such as teak, or by applying a protective coating to conventional wood or plastic. Vases are often decorated, and they are often used to hold cut flowers. Vases come in different sizes to support whatever flower is being held or kept in place.

Vases generally share a similar shape. The foot or the base may be bulbous, flat, carinate, or another shape. The body forms the main portion of the piece. Some vases have a shoulder, where the body curves inward, a neck, which gives height, and a lip, where the vase flares back out at the top. Some vases are also given handles.

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Glass art in the context of Studio glass

Studio glass is the modern use of glass as an artistic medium to produce sculptures or three-dimensional artworks in the fine arts. The glass objects created are typically intended to make a sculptural or decorative statement, rather than fulfill functions (other than perhaps as vases) such as tableware. Though usage varies, the term is properly restricted to glass made as art in small workshops, typically with the personal involvement of the artist who designed the piece. This is in contrast to art glass, made by craftspeople in factories, and glass art, covering the whole range of glass with artistic interest made throughout history. Both art glass and studio glass originate in the 19th century, and the terms compare with studio pottery and art pottery, but in glass the term "studio glass" is mostly used for work made in the period beginning in the 1960s with a major revival in interest in artistic glassmaking.

Pieces are often unique, or made in a small limited edition. Their prices may range from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands of dollars (US). For the largest installations, the prices are in the millions.

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Glass art in the context of Glass engraving

Engraved glass is a type of decorated glass that involves shallowly engraving the surface of a glass object, either by holding it against a rotating wheel, or manipulating a "diamond point" in the style of an engraving burin. It is a subgroup of glass art, which refers to all artistic glass, much of it made by "hot" techniques such as moulding and blowing melting glass, and with other "cold" techniques such as glass etching which uses acidic, caustic, or abrasive substances to achieve artistic effects, and cut glass, which is cut with an abrasive wheel, but more deeply than in engraved glass, where the engraving normally only cuts deeply enough into the surface to leave a mark. Usually the engraved surface is left "frosted" so a difference is visible, while in cut glass the cut surface is polished to restore transparency. Some pieces may combine two or more techniques.

There are several different techniques of glass engraving. It has been practised since ancient times, including Roman glass, and professionally engraved glass has always been an expensive luxury, requiring lavish amounts of labour by a highly skilled craftsman or artist. In recent centuries the most notable periods and places of production started in the 16th century, initially mostly in Venetian glass, then later in Germany and Bohemian glass. From about 1645 it was used in the Netherlands, which was producing the finest engraving by 1700, by which time some engraving was used in most glass-making centres in Europe. The late 17th and early 18th centuries were in some ways the peak period of achievement and popularity. From 1730 onwards it received some competition from the new geometric cut glass style developed in England. These related techniques were often combined in a single piece, but the engraving tended to be relegated to less prominent positions.

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Glass art in the context of Stained glass

Stained glass refers to coloured glass as a material or art and architectural works created from it. Although it is traditionally made in flat panels and used as windows, the creations of modern stained glass artists also include three-dimensional structures and sculpture. Modern vernacular usage has often extended the term "stained glass" to include domestic lead light and objets d'art created from glasswork, for example in the famous lamps of Louis Comfort Tiffany.

As a material stained glass is glass that has been coloured by adding metallic salts during its manufacture. It may then be further decorated in various ways. The coloured glass may be crafted into a stained-glass window, in which small pieces of glass are arranged to form patterns or pictures, held together (traditionally) by strips of lead, called cames or calms, and supported by a rigid frame. Painted details and yellow-coloured silver stain are often used to enhance the design. The term stained glass is also applied to enamelled glass in which the colors have been painted onto the glass and then fused to the glass in a kiln.

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Glass art in the context of David Patchen

David Scott Patchen (born 1966) is an American glass artist who uses the techniques of cane and murrine in an American style.

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Glass art in the context of Art glass

Art glass is a subset of glass art, this latter covering the whole range of art made from glass. Art glass normally refers only to pieces made since the mid-19th century, and typically to those purely made as sculpture or decorative art, with no main utilitarian function, such as serving as a drinking vessel, though of course stained glass keeps the weather out, and bowls may still be useful.

The term is most used of American glass, where the style is "the logical outcome of the American demand for novelty during the 19th century and was characterized by elaborate form and exotic finish", but not always the highest quality of execution. There was a great interest in complex colour effects and painted enamelled glass. For art historians the "art glass" phase replaced the "Brilliant Period" of High-Victorian heavy decoration, and was in turn was replaced around 1900 by Art Nouveau glass, but the term may still be used for marketing purposes to refer to contemporary products. In fact the "Brilliant Period" style, which relied on deeply cut glass, continued to be made until about 1915, and sometimes thereafter.

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Glass art in the context of Cameo glass

Cameo glass is a luxury form of glass art produced by cameo glass engraving or etching and carving through fused layers of differently colored glass to produce designs, usually with white opaque glass figures and motifs on a dark-colored background. The technique is first seen in ancient Roman art of about 30 BC, where it was an alternative to the more luxurious engraved gem vessels in cameo style that used naturally layered semi-precious gemstones such as onyx and agate. Glass allowed consistent and predictable colored layers, even for round objects.

From the mid-19th century there was a revival of cameo glass, suited equally to Neo-Grec taste and the French Art Nouveau practiced by Émile Gallé. Cameo glass is still produced today.

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Glass art in the context of Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter (German: [ˈɡeːɐ̯haʁt ˈʁɪçtɐ]; born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has produced abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, photographs and glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary German artists and several of his works have set record prices at auction, with him being the most expensive living painter at one time.

Richter has been called the "greatest living painter", "the world's most important artist" and the "Picasso of the 21st century".

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