Glass Arts & Crafts in Nigeria

Glass art refers to individual works of art that are largely or entirely made of glass. Sizes range from monumental works and installations to wall hangings and windows, to works of art made in studios and factories, including glass jewelry and glassware. As a decorative and functional medium, glass developed widely in Egypt and Assyria. Invented by the Phoenicians, the Romans came to the fore. During the Middle Ages, builders of Europe's great Norman and Gothic cathedrals took glass art to new heights, using stained glass as a major architectural and decorative element. Murano glass in the Venetian Lagoon (also known as Venetian glass) is the result of hundreds of years of sophistication and ingenuity. Murano is still considered the birthplace of modern glass art. The turn of the 19th century was the pinnacle of the glass movement of the old art, while factory glass blowers were replaced by mechanical bottle blowing and continuous window glass. Great ateliers such as Tiffany, Lalique, Daum, Gallé, Corning Schools in Upper New York and Steuben Glass Arts & Crafts in Nigeria  Glass Works have taken art glass to the next level. Traditionally, glass is a medium for artists. The tradition of precision and colorful metallurgy and blown Venetian glass has been maintained on the Venetian island of Murano since the 13th century, thanks in part to the local pure quartz and the privileged position of the Venetians in the trade with the levant (supply of complex potassium) .The modern heyday of Venetian art is in the 1950s and 1960s. It is still a world center and a kind of Mecca for artists and glass lovers. There is the Vetrario Museum, or the Museum of Glass, which houses glass of local production, as well as archaeological finds from Egypt and Lebanon - the culture of Phenicia, which, according to the Roman historian Pliny the Elder, merchants accidentally created glass around a fire. about 5000 BC In a culturally isolated corner of the scale, the Finnish modernist school presents, for example, a vase-sized sculpture, starting with the still popular Aalto vase, executed by the architect and artist in a glass by Alvar Aalto in 1937 and awarded the Grand Prix. at the World Exhibition of Decorative and Applied Arts in Paris. As a rule, Finnish glass is characterized by streamlining, transparency, and in the case of unconventional sculptural forms - exaggerated glass thickness, sometimes it introduces an internal roughness under the ground and, as a result, creates a turbidity effect when light is scattered. The Finnish school is still supported by, inter alia, individual artists, as well as a commercial glass factory with affiliated artist-designers of the industrial enterprise (at the same time shop) Iittal. Famous and technically incompletely understood is the glass of the Blaszek family made by glass masters and artists, made in Germany, possibly originating from Venice. Leopold Blaschka and his son Rudolph prepared (never duplicating) the so-called "glass flowers (in English)". This collection was commissioned by a professor of botany at Harvard University in the late 19th century. This collection, with a total of about 900 pieces, is still considered technically unsurpassed (Harvard Museum of Natural History). Leopold Blaschka also made separate glass models of invertebrates. These specimens are kept at Cornell University in Ithaca and the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. Undoubtedly, the most diverse art glass is currently produced in the United States. The American individual metallurgy of art glass dates back to colonial times, when household items were smelted from the characteristic greenish glass with specially tempered air bubbles propelled through it for decoration. There are currently many individual artists working in the US and glass art is taught and practiced at universities, including the postmodern trend. Many small artists make sculptures and dishes, glass flowers, figures, recently accompanied by computers. Traditionally, they are full, bright, or dark colored vessels from the Appalachian ironworks, for example. a ruby ​​or emerald in the color of a bowl and vase, crafted by generations of artists from the Glassco Glass Company. In the 20th century, Cincinnati, in particular the Rockwood Pottery laboratory, was one of the first companies founded and run by a woman in 1880, the main place of the flourishing of pottery glaze and peculiar glass in the American art deco style. Maria Longworth Nichols, wife of Colonel George Ward Nicho https://jiji.ng/art-collectibles/glass