Lampwork Wonders
In Northern Liberties, the Philadelphia Glass Works, co-owned by Nathan Purcell and Ian Kerr, is the only glass studio in Philadelphia specializing in lampworking. Lampworking or flameworking is sometimes undervalued because it's probably the most affordable form of glassmaking, often used for producing third-world tchotchkes. But don't look for generic glass menageries in the PGW's Gallery 908.
In skilled hands, lampworking can be imposing in scale and precision. Incorporating individually wrought elements, it lends itself to a kind of fantastical inventiveness. Purcell's collaboration with resident artist Joshua Opdenaker, The Drinkers' Hookah, is a tall, flattish goblet. A symmetrical structure of layered, different-colored elements, it includes facing black glass heads with flowing hair. Tubes of sculpted glass allow two people to sip from the vessel simultaneously, suggesting possible ritual uses.
Purcell is individually showing goblets with linear, rather Celtic-looking stems. Opdenaker's "All Dogs Go to Heaven" goblets feature detailed male and female figures entwined with red leaves.
Gallery 908 also shows blown and cast glass from an eclectic group of artists. In New Zealander Mark Leputa's "Purity Paperweights," a luscious core of color floats beneath one crystaline-polished facet. South American Marc Barreda, now in Kennett Square, brilliantly displays his Venetian glassblowing skills in his understated Refracted Net Rocker, a clear round-bottomed vessel in which a net of cane captures a grid of tiny bubbles.
Opaque black glass opens to bold translucent red and clear panels in Zach Puchowitz's Cutz I bowl. In a different color take, a mass of dark dichroic glass reveals a spangled rainbow of color in Taylor Backes's roiling, solid worked "Boats."
Japanese-born Ayako Ikeda is showing several of her pastel-tinted "Ume" bowls, with incised flower patterns. Her husband Christopher Lydon's large Red Squid and smaller Green Squid stand out, partly for their intense color and even more for their well-wrought forms, bringing to mind the sea creatures so popular with Art Nouveau masters of glass like Gallé. Together Ikeda and Lydon as Glassboss Studios produce a playful line of harlequin-patterned Venetian-inspired vases.
This is not a precisely themed show, but more of a gift shop — a seductive one with very reasonable prices and impressive discounts every weekend before Christmas.
Gallery 908
Through Dec. 23, Philadelphia Glass Works, 908 N. Third St., 215-627-3655
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