Colours of the Garden
Fresh Air Sculpture show, Quenington 2024
 

Spring in the Studio..Throughout April we have been creating a new collection of glass pieces and paintings inspired by the pink blossoms of Spring and the greens of new growth that this season of sunshine and showers brings. Working togeher in collaboration acros the mediums of oil paint, blown glass and sandcarved, engraved glass we have found new ways to explore our work and create a Spring collection of pieces that bring the colours of the outdoors in. 

Louises paintings of the apple blossom from the allotment and Spring flowers such as Magnolia and Hellebore have informed the pallette of the studio glass ranges which Colin has used in his work, translating the soft pastels and saturated tones of the pinks and greens into his Pod vase, Oil pourer and Flame Decanter ranges. Louise has also engraved a trio of new Floral bowl designs, directly informed by the observations made from life in her paintings and sketches.

 Louises elbow is healing and she is beginning to return to making a limited number of small sandcarved and engraved pieces. for this collection she has worked directly from her paintings and sketches of hellebores and primula, Magnolia and Pear blossom..

We chose our favourites from our familiar studio ranges to include in the display.. 

Flame Decanters.. elegant and decorative this range was designed by Colin for his final show at The Royal College of Art. this makes them our longest standing design. Following a trip to Madeira the originals were made in Lime green and Citrus orange to reflect the Bird of paradise flowers that inspired them. it is pleasingly apt to be making them in the colours of an English Spring for this, the  25th year of our glass studio,

Pod Vases.. are one of our most popular functional studio ranges. Their beautifully flattened organic forms make them an easy way to to incorporate a vase, with or without flowers, into any space, windowsill, tabletop or shelf, we love the pastel opaque shades.

Oil pourers.. have been made in many shapes and sizes over the years, with and without handles, tall, short, round, and conical they are used in hotels and restaurants around the world as well as in many homes and kitchens, including our own. we wouldnt be without ours, such an attractive and practical way to keep the olive oil on the counter top.

Louises oil paintings are painted alla prima from life and completed in one or two sittings directly from observation. She brings together and groups collections of the objects and forms from nature that surround her, the motifs of the rituals and rythms of daily life and the changing seasons. this small group of  paintings have been made in response to the emergence of Spring, the arrival of lighter days, the soft light of showery days, the fresh green shoots of growth and the beginnings of colour returning to the trees, fields, hedgerows and gardens.

it is very exciting to see our  different practices come together in a cohesive display at the glass studio and we are really pleased with the outcomes. We are looking forward to sharing the work with our collectors and visitors to the studio. All the pieces are also offered  on our website on the Spring in the studio gallery page in the shop. Do take a moment to enjoy the season with us and take a look

Louise's piece Tall Tulips has been selected for the Figurative Art Now exhibition @mallgalleries.

Tall Tulips 38cm x 14cm.

Click here to visit the exhibition online. (Page 7)

We were delighted to both have pieces selected for inclusion in "Textures" the Contemporary Glass Society's current online exhibition, an opportunity to showcase our different approaches to the theme of surface texture within our respective practices.

Colin Hawkins

Strata Vase

H27cm, W18cm

link to shop

Applied trails of hot glass trap shadow and light in their movement creating highly reflective flowing layers within the textural surface.

Louise Hawkins

Tulip vessel
 

Etching by hand into the glass, cutting all the way through the coloured layer creating a deep tactile carve.

Juxtaposing light and dark, transparent and opaque, the surface texture of the piece defines its flow and form.
 

Mini bowls, developed during the first Lockdown, we first made six different floral designs for the Artists Support pledge scheme, to be suitable they had to be under £200 and postable..

With our studio closed to the public during this second lockdown, less time for our personal work and a socially distanced Christmas in prospect, we have returned to the mini bowl as a way to make some accessible and giftable pieces.

Woodland Creatures are a collection of nine new mini bowls that we have decided to release as limited editions, this means that we will only ever make ten of each design.

Each piece will follow the layout and pattern of the original design however they will still be unique pieces as there has to be a new drawing made to fit each hand cut and carved individual bowl.

I have always enjoyed the drawing element of our glass work but with this woodland collection there is a real shift in my focus. I approached each piece as a composition, a picture rather than a pattern.

I have been gradually developing a visual language and this year especially has really changed my approach to my work and I feel a confidence in beginning to explore the subjects that I love, animals, nature and the decorative arts.

One of each woodland design will be available from our website at 10am on Friday 27th November as part of the @digitalcraftfestival. We will also be opening the order book for each editioned design.

Visit Louises Shop

Developed during lockdown.. Leaf bottles are the new addition to our studio ranges.

Once we were through the first few weeks of the Lockdown we were so grateful to be able to return to our studio safely as a family bubble, even though it was intermittently and for just three hours at a time. We had our young sons at home with us and we all did our best to make the most of what we could still do.

Being creative was one of the ways that we coped with that difficult time and the Leaf bottle design comes from that very unique Spring, when exploring and making new ideas was an expression of hope.

The stoppers are sculpted from clear glass and the bases blown and flattened, we love the simplicity of the forms and the interaction between them.

Our first ‘Forest’ of these pieces were exhibited at the Paragon Gallery in Cheltenham when the first Lockdown was lifted and it was such a joy to see them in a real life exhibition where they could be seen and enjoyed.

We have given them a place within our Studio ranges and they will remind us that inspiration can come from anywhere, including adversity.

See Leaf Bottles in our shop.

Summer Dish is a recently completed private commission. It is always exciting for us to work with people on bespoke pieces, the commission process is an enjoyable one that takes our work in interesting directions that we would not have gone by ourselves.

Collaborating with our customers provides a constant source of inspiration to us and it is so rewarding to create objects that have personal meaning intrinsically woven into them.

In this case the client wanted a mixed floral piece to include Dahlia and Fuschia flowers.

Despite the distance and the coronavirus restrictions we were easily able to communicate about colours, shapes and ideas with drawings and photographs by email. The outcome is a unique and bespoke piece made to suit our customer perfectly.

Landscape is one of our longest running studio ranges. We can’t remember exactly when the very first piece was made but we think it was 20 years ago when we moved from the Broadfield House glass museum and into our current studio.

Our only range that doesn’t use solid colour but chips and grains of coloured glass, they are a nod to our glassblowing heritage and the colourful and playful ‘after hours’ pieces that the old glass factory makers used to produce at the end of the glassblowing day.

We have made and sold many variations of our landscape vases and bowls over the years, including a colour way inspired by and developed for sale at Highgrove gardens. More recently one of our new landscape bottles was commissioned and presented to Sir David Attenborough.

Current pieces from this range are available to purchase direct from our studio, also from some of our stockists and galleries and from our website

Spending time outdoors and in gardens this Summer, is one of the ways that we are making our way through these challenging times.

We were looking forward to taking part in some outdoor exhibitions this year, some of which have been cancelled, however four of Colin’s garden pieces are available from AA Fine Art in their Garden Sculpture exhibition.

The exhibition features the work of ten artists working in various materials including stone, bronze and clay.

Click on link to visit the exhibition  Amanda Aldous Fine Art

It was during lockdown and with great uncertainty that we began to plan and blow our pieces for the Jewel Garden exhibition.

During that time, back in March and April we, like many others, became more grateful than ever for our outside space, spending time close to home on our allotment, sowing seeds and raising plants.

As Spring turned to Summer the flowers came out and became the source of inspiration for Louise to create the drawings for the sand carved surfaces of our three finished pieces,  Cornflower, Cosmo and Summer bouquet.

It is a joy for us now to see our work on display in the exhibition, alongside the work of our fellow guild members, in a bricks and mortar gallery that is able to safely open to the public.

These pieces, that began as seeds of hope to us, now represent and celebrate the welcome coming of Summer after an extraordinarily challenging Spring.

Jewel Garden Exhibition

A mixed discipline exhibition of work inspired by the forms and colours of plants anf flowers.

The Guild@51

30th June - 9th August

Tues-Sat 10-2

Instagram Locostudioglass

Cornflowers..We sowed the seeds of these intensely blue flowers back in March and now they are blooming as lockdown is easing a little, bringing joy to us and doing their thing for the pollinators.

We have had our allotment for 18 years and it has always been such a wonderul source of joy and inspiration and this year we we have been especially grateful for it.

Through a process of experimentation in our glass blowing studio we discovered just the right combination of two colours. We used this unique blend to achieve an intense and deep blue with variation of sapphire shades and hints of violet, closely representing the colours found within the Cornflower itself.  Each of the bowls made is blown by hand and has their own drawing of a flowing tangle of stem and bloom that is sandcarved by hand into the surface. Each of these elements drawn from observing the Cornflower plants combine to capture their essence

We have made a small group of six of these bowls and are offering them as part of the wonderful @artistsupportpledge

https://www.locoglass.co.uk/products/204-cornflower-bowl

Cornflower bowl

Hand blown, sand carved glass.

13cm x 8cm

We are always inspired by nature, most recently our focus has been to create work that reflects the diverse, and in most cases declining, habitats in our countryside. It no longer feels enough to simply admire and represent the beauty of nature, it has become our role to also highlight the need to protect it.

Our aim is to draw the viewers attention to the places between the concrete and the cultivated, the habitats that are essential for the survival of our native wildlife and to our own.

The fluidity of the glass represents well the movement of the plants and intuitively we have amplified this connection by creating intentionally undulating forms. The resulting vessels are specimens, containing the essence of a small part of a larger infrastructure seen at a particular moment, noticed, acknowledged and preserved.

Sketches and photographs from our visits provide the content for the intricate surfaces of the vessels, applied using hand cut stencil and sand carving. The title of each piece is the National Grid reference of the location and the date that it was observed.

These pieces are at the Pool House Gallery as part of the contemporary craft exhibition, From where I'm Standing, curated by Jo Swait June 16^th – July 17^th

Waters Edge. Are a group of vessels made in response to the 325 acres of Wetlands that are expertly and successfully managed and conserved at Slimbridge Wetland Centre on the Severn Estuary. The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust has nine centres around the country where they undertake research and conservation.

In February this year we visited the Wetland centre and, under supervision, were given access to the wild areas and permission to collect plant samples from the waters edge and surrounding areas.

These stone forms were created following our visit to Greystones Nature reserve, a place whose history stretches back 6,000 years. Here the Gloucestershire Wildlife trust carefully manage and preserve the land to ensure that wildlife thrives.

In particular their Hay meadows, an endangered habitat, support a stunning range of animal, plants and insects. We gained special permission to collect plant specimens around the Hay meadows and to photograph the meadows themselves.

As with many conservation environments there is a sense of nurture, of caretaking, in response we created these stone forms, shapes of the ground and passage of time, wrapped and bound by the encircling plants.

This week we delivered a small collection of Floral pieces to the Painswick Rococo gardens. They will be on display and for sale in their shop during the summer sculpture exhibitition, Art Unbound.

The exhibition of contemporary art has been designed to embrace the natural beauty and creative energy of the rococo period and runs until the 8th September.

This month we have recently completed a group of new sand carved bowls and vases inspired by the plant collections at The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

The designs including Orchid and Iris, were delivered this week and are on display and for sale in their shop.

‘..Just 100 years ago there would have been a Meadow in every Cotswold parish. Providing grazing and hay, employment, food and medicine. The meadow was part of a community’s culture and social history. Today just 3% of them remain. A loss of 7.5 million acres of wild flower grassland.. a single healthy meadow can support over 80 species of wild flowers..’

First exhibited at Rodmarton Manor September 2018, where the bowl was awarded The Richard Paice Award for Contemporary Craft. The bowl went on to be exhibited at The Lapada show, Berkeley square, where it was awarded 'Best Object in Show 2018' This piece is now in a private collection.

Research and design, February 2017 for a bespoke mini bowl for retail by a client in the Falkland Islands.

These pieces feature three swirled colours and two king penguins, diving amongst giant sea kelp.

Back in June 2017 we installed three new sculptures as part of Fresh Air 2017. Our sixth time of showing at this wonderful sculpture show.

Bespoke pendant lamp trio.. To be installed above a handmade bar in a restored and renovated Cotswold Stone Barn. 

Sampling process,  in miniature for shade design colours and options.. the overlay leaf pattern, inspired by client logo, is chosen for final design.

Colin blows full size shades, using swedish overlay technique to acheive colour on the outside of the shades.

Making Shades.. in shades.

Blown shades are cooled overnight and drilled in the tops.

Each leaf element is drawn, cut and applied by hand to the shades surface, then each piece sandblasted, again by hand, to remove the excess colour and reveal the resulting pattern.

The shades are installed in a row of gradated colour, from Amber, through Sargasso to Eel.. finished with brass fittings and flex. A wonderful result, the colours and patterns of these unique pieces very successfully compliment the style and finish of the bespoke interior.

Vase commission to celebrate a birth. The Scabious flower was chosen by the client for its particular meaning to them. 

The vase shape is low and wide, reflecting the habit of the plant and achieving balance of pattern and form. 

Earlier this year Glyndebourne Opera House invited us to create a collection of exclusive pieces in response to their gardens and grounds in East Sussex.

"...Glyndebourne is a unique and inspiring place and my tour of the grounds left me with a strong impression of the gardens and the sense of connection that those who visit have with the landscape..." The resulting design is inspired by the magnificent and ancient Mulberry tree that grows in the corner of the main lawn where, over the years, many picnics have taken place beneath its branches and many jars of jam made from its fruit.

The Mulberry Tree design began as a one off blown cameo vase onto which Louise drew the original sketches and developed the pattern.

Colin then blew a collection of individual lead crystal bowls that Louise hand etched using sand carving.

We are so pleased that a limited number of these pieces are now available to purchase exclusively from Glyndebourne.

https://www.glyndebourneshop.com/categories/homeware/mulberry-tree-glassware-for-glyndebourne.html?sort=newest

The development of new work culminates in a photography session... This collection of pieces shows our current exploration of nature inspired pattern, texture and repetition. Hand applied and sand carved to acheive layers of depth that envelop and encase the glass forms. Exhibiting at AAF Battersea March 2017

BULB
4TH FEB – 19TH MARCH
Lighting up the dark months of winter

Lighting design from across the UK, in a range of materials from concrete to glass, wood to paper and vegetable to metal

http://www.newbreweryarts.org.uk/main-gallery

Creating samples of these bespoke Moth to a flame candle votives has been a lovely way to start the year, bringing together pattern, form and scent. They are now ready to be filled with hand poured natural soy aromatherapy candles. We are so pleased to be collaborating with the wonderfully talented Sophia Russell of Hestias Flame. Her stunning candles are formed from 100% Soy wax which is natural and sustainable. The scents are blended from pure essential oils, not synthetic perfumes, so they will be therapeutically beneficial as well as smell wonderful.

The 'Gnarly Willow' was a recent customer commission which stands at an impressive 16 feet high and has over 50 hand blown lead crystal glass leaves attached to it. There are also Led lights discreetly hidden inside the metalwork which bring the tree to life on an overcast day.

Once the pallette and samples were approved we set about creating the 50 unique glass leaves.

We have just finished working on these rather large lightshades for a new restaurant in Plymouth, 'La Bistrot Pierre'.

After an initial design was settled upon we set about making 7 shades.

The shades were made by a team of 4 and took 2 days to make. 

This was a fantastic commission which came about from an unfortunate breakage.

We enjoy a challenge and this was no exception. We regularly repair or remake pieces of glass but this piece was exceptional.

The clear glass bowl that we had to make was 50cm in diameter and had to be thick enough for the heavily cut pattern that needed to be applied.

The 'blank' took several attempts and a team of four to manhandle the volume of glass that was required.

The blank was delivered to one of the finest glass cutters in the uk for the elaborate pattern to be applied. 

It now rests high above a dining table in a private residence in Leicestershire.

We welcome the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath to our list of stockists.

http://www.victoriagal.org.uk/

Fig Bowl in Silver Leaf by Louise.

For David Everitt- Matthias, the chef and owner of Cheltenham’s only Michelin starred restaurant, Le Champignon Sauvage, unused place settings detracted from the beautifully styled interior of his restuarant. Familiar with the work of LoCo Glass, David challenged the team to design glass plate covers to sit at these unused settings.

We were very lucky to work with the talented Film Director Cristian Barnett on our new film.

After a fantastic day filming Cristian edited the footage and then comissioned songwriter Jake Wing to write the music to go with it.

The result can be viewed here; http://vimeo.com/57207942

ENJOY!