Platter Ranges

PLATTER RANGES

Making plates is good for my soul – I get a kick out of blowing big! When I started blowing glass, I learned how to make a plate before I could make a cup. My plates are a combination of my passion for blowing large vessels and for colour and pattern.When blowing a plate, you blow a bug bubble then flatten it into a burger, punti it, then using a combination of heat, gravity and centrifugal forces, you spin like hell and open the form into a plate or gorgeous platter.

I have designed several platter ranges.

The CareBear Platter or Nautilus Shell exposes my dreams, capturing the surrealism and fantastical visual delights of the opacity and transparency of glass. The platters are made using a triple colour opaque trail, wrap spiraled around a transparent bubble, blown up and spun onto a beautiful spectrum of colour and patterns. They remind me of a CareBear sunset, or sometimes a surreal nautilus shell.

The Landscape Platter was designed originally using opal white with trails of cherry red and aqua marine, which represent the sea, land and sky. The opposing colours will make the form want to spin out in different directions, hence every platter is completely individual. I place the blue and red trails in deliberate places on the bubble to represent the river through the hills, with blue skies surrounding. I like to control the form to a point, and then let the colours create the final form of ‘Landscape’.

The Iris Platter introduces the notion of fluidity of glass. When I make a plate, generally it spins out round and flat. I’ll want to give it life! I give the walls of the platter movement and form, and the piece becomes alive and real. You can see what you want in these platters; they have been likened to stingrays, flowers and water. There is a fluidity of masculine and feminine in the living forms of these platters.