Norman Stuart-Clarke

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Norman Stuart Clarke is one of Britain’s leading glass artists. He harnesses his skills and energy shaping and caressing forms from glowing molten glass at his studios in France. “In the turbulent late sixties I gave up my day job and signed on at Walthamstow Art School. From there it was up to Middlesex Poly and a B.A. in ceramics and glass. This was in the early days of the Studio Glass Movement and in those exciting times most glassblowers were high on ideas low on technique. Impatient to get my hands on the hot glass and short of studios to work in, I went to Nazeing Glassworks near my home in Essex. Here I worked alongside master glassblowers from all over Europe and learned many techniques as well as all the amusing stories of life in earlier glassblowing times. Moving from one team to another in the factory, mostly on the hot, flame polishing work I was dubbed “Master of the Flames” in 1977. At the London Glassblowing Workshop from 1978-1983 I found my way with colours and the hot glass and soon was exhibiting worldwide. I set up my own workshop and gallery in Cornwall in 1984 I have always been a painter and poet at heart and now my expression is through the imagery of my hot glass. To lay out the different coloured glasses on the metal bench is a joyful experience and then to gather red-hot molten glass from the furnace and roll it onto the carefully arranged colours is bliss! Each piece is decorated before being blown and shaped, the image stretching and growing on the flowing, molten mass until a new vessel is created at a temperature of a thousand degrees, glowing and pulsing like a newborn star”. Many different coloured glasses are arranged into designs before being applied to the molten glass and blown by mouth on a blowing iron until they reach their final form. The beautiful glass vases, bowls, perfume bottles and paperweights are exhibited worldwide and included in many private and public collections of art.