International Year of Glass

The United Nations General Assembly has formally declared 2022 as the International Year of Glass.

This is the year that we are encouraged to not merely look through this magical material, but really see and appreciate it.

Glass has a long history of making the invisible visible. Since the discovery of early obsidian tools glass as a material has shaped how we see the world from microscope slides to telescope lenses.

It was Galileo that improved the design of the first telescope and applied it to astronomy in the early seventeenth century.

A few decades later the work of mathematician and natural philosopher Robert Hooke showed audiences the visual theatre of seeing the world in a new way. He was the first person to make drawings from images taken under a microscope. In 1662 he had the rather wonderful title of ‘Curator of Experiments’ for the Royal Society. Glass as a material allowed this bringing together of art and science, which was the beginning of a new scientific culture.

It was in 1768 that Joseph Wright of Derby exhibited his ‘An experiment on a bird in the Air Pump’ – a dramatic painting showing a rare white cockatoo as it flutters in panic as the air is sucked from the glass that contains it. It is a moment that makes you hold your breath.

This is science as visual spectacle, where the glass reveals the importance of the very air we breathe.

Glass was also a vital ingredient in early photography. In 1839 Sir John Herschel created the first glass-plate negative. A method so perfect for capturing the skies that it was used in astronomy until the 1990s. Meanwhile at some point before 1844, Fox Talbot took ‘Articles of Glass’ to show how the new medium of photography could effortlessly capture shelves full of glass, once the domain of virtuoso painters.

In this century I have found that I am increasingly drawn to working with clear lead crystal glass.

The lead content gives it a beautiful clarity. It can be polished more easily for everything from telescope lenses to cut crystal wine glasses. It can also capture the texture of the natural world perfectly as this little ‘Fairy Apple’ shows. I always associate apples with the story of Isaac Newton ‘when the notion of gravitation came into his mind’ and the tale of Snow White. Or more specifically my nephew holding out a slice of fruit and saying ‘this is not a poisoned apple!’

Glass has opened up new realms of knowledge from the microscopic to the macroscopic, and allowed us to explore a world beyond our own vision.

Which leads us to the present day and the marvellous images taken with the James Webb telescope that enables us to see images of the early cosmos, containing light that has taken many billions of years to reach us.

The long-term consequence of the perfecting of clear glass manufacture has really been about the development of glass as a thinking tool from mirrors, lenses, spectacles, mobile phone screens and of course apples!