2016 Festival offers "Glass Inspirations"

The 2016 Festival of Glass will feature internationally renowned glass artists Peter Minson and Mark Eliott in a series of activities under the title “Glass Inspirations”.

1. "Endangered in Glass" – a Masterclass (19 February 2016)

Minson and Eliott will each make glass sculptures of the locally endangered Hooded Plover and

Weedy Sea Dragon. Mark Eliott

Orange-bellied Parrot, while talking about their techniques and their involvement with glass. Large video screens will give ‘close-ups’ of their work. To complement their commentaries, Wathaurong elder Uncle David Tournier will give an Indigenous perspective on the birds and their habitat - the area known originally as Bella Wein.

The Masterclass is a collaboration between the Festival, Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-op and several local environmental groups; and the glass replicas will be auctioned to assist the birds’ survival. Subsequently, they will tour the region, raising awareness of the birds' plight and of the beauty of glass art.

2. "Inside and Outside the House of Lamp-Work" (22 – 25 February 2016)

Minson and Eliott will run two fee-paying workshops exploring interplays between structure and

Untitled. Peter Minson

improvisation in the creation of glass art. The workshops are for beginning and established local glass artists, who will be encouraged to exhibit at a Festival of Glass and/or to enter its Glass Art Awards; and a mentorship programme will assist them to do so.

3. "It’s Your Turn" – free workshops (20, 21, 26 February 2016)


These free workshops will offer local people who may be newcomers to glass art an insight into its creation. In each workshop, Minson and Eliott will demonstrate basic glass-working techniques, then invite participants to create simple pieces of glass art and to create a collective glass sculpture for the venue. One workshop will be for the general community and will be part of the 2016 Festival of Glass Expo on 21 February 2016. The other two workshops will be for the elderly and for young people and  will be held in circumstances familiar to each group.

 

Peter Minson

Mark Eliott

In “Glass Inspirations”, the Festival of Glass collaborates with Peter Minson and Mark Eliott to inspire local people to create glass art, to exhibit at a Festival of Glass and/or to enter its Glass Art Awards. The aim is to grow the Bellarine Peninsula’s reputation for glass-related activities by attracting creative and economic investment in the region's glass artists.

2016 Glass Art Awards: entries now open

Entries are now open to the 2016 Glass Art Awards; entry forms must be submitted by 5 February 2016.

The Glass Art Awards are part of the Festival of Glass, now in its sixth year. Entries will be judged and announced during the Festival's Expo on Sunday 21 February 2016.

There are four Categories:

·      Functional Glass Art

·      Sculptural Glass Art

·      Wearable Glass Art

·      Glass-related Photography.

Each Category has two Divisions:

·      Intermediate (8 - 18 years old)

·      Open (19 years of age and older).

In each Category, the Intermediate Division has a first prize of $100 and a second prize of $50; and the Open Division has a first prize of $200 and a second prize of $100.

There are also two special Awards:

Second Life Glass Art Award ($1,000)

This Award will go to the best piece of glass art that is made solely by recycling glass. This is the second year of this Award, which is sponsored by the Rotary Club of Drysdale. The Festival of Glass committee is very grateful to the Rotary Club for its generosity. The theme of this year's Award is "A Gift to the World", to coincide with International Rotary's theme for 2015 - 2016 - "Be a gift to the world".

Entries will be judged by the 2016 judging panel:- Mark  Edwards (Wauthorong Glass), Mercedes Drummond (Glass Art Awards convenor) and a representative of the Rotary Club of Drysdale.

Bella Wein Glass Art Award ($500)

This Award will go to the piece of glass art that best interprets the identity of the Bellarine Peninsula. The Award celebrates the continuity between the past and the present - "Bella Wein" is the name given to the Peninsula by the area's original owners, the Wathaurong people. 

This is a new award and is sponsored by the Clifton Springs and Curlewis Lions Club. The Festival of Glass committee is very grateful to the Lions for their generosity.

Entries will be judged by the 2016 judging panel:- Mark  Edwards (Wauthorong Glass), Mercedes Drummond (Glass Art Awards convenor) and a representative of The Clifton Springs and Curlewis Lion Club.

Information, entry forms and conditions of entry for the 2016 Glass Art awards are on the Festival of Glass web site : www.festivalofglass.net.au

2016 Festival of Glass introduces a Treasure Hunt!

The 2016 Festival of Glass will feature a novel addition - a Treasure Hunt.

The Treasure Hunt will promote local glass artists, while also promoting local businesses and involving them in the Festival.

Each local business is being asked to commission a Glass Art Treasure from a glass artist who will exhibit at the 2016 Festival Expo. In return, the Festival will promote the business's involvement, using the Festival's web site and blog, its Facebook page (over 500 followers), other social media platforms and local media releases. The outcome for the business should be an increase in custom.

How will it work?
The Treasure Hunt will run between Monday 1 February and Sunday 21 February 2016. Each participating business will receive a poster for their window, saying that they are part of the Treasure Hunt; a Glass Art Treasure to display prominently; a glass Tiny Treasure to display - less prominently; and Treasure Hunt forms.

Each business will stamp the Treasure Hunt form of each Treasure Hunter who spots the business's Tiny Treasure and buys something (or is a regular customer). Treasure Hunters will enter their completed Treasure Hunt forms in a draw for the Glass Art Treasures, which will be held at the 2016 Festival of Glass Expo (Sunday 21st February 10.00am - 4.00pm at Christian College, Drysdale).

Engaging the community
Commissioning pieces of glass art and then creating them can take time, so Festival committee members are already inviting local businesses to be part of the Treasure Hunt and to think about what they'd like to commission. The response has been very positive, with business owners intrigued by the idea of the Treasure Hunt ... and by its potential to increase their custom. 

The Treasure Hunt is proving to be a real boost to business involvement in the Festival of Glass, meeting the committee's aim of engaging the local community in promoting the work of local glass artists and growing the area's reputation as a centre of glass-related activities. The number of local individuals, groups, organisations and businesses involved in the Festival grows gradually each year and 2016 will be no exception.
 
Each year, something more
The Treasure Hunt will be a novel addition to the Festival of Glass, now in its sixth year. Each year, the Festival committee adds a new feature to maintain interest in the Festival. For example, the 2015 Festival featured internationally renowned Sydney glass artist Mark Eliott, who held demonstrations of glass art at the Festival Expo and ran workshops in the following week. Mark will return to the 2016 Festival, along with fellow glass artist Peter Minson. The 2014 Festival included Glass on Film - a rolling programme of short films about glass. Glass on Film was also a feature of the 2015 Festival and will be part of the 2016 Festival.

FoG in Winter July/August 2015. What’s Winter without FoG?

In July/August 2015, the second annual FoG in Winter presents a series of glass-related events on the Bellarine Peninsula

“People who attend FoG in Winter events can learn how to make beautiful objects in glass”, said Festival of Glass Convenor Mercedes Drummond. “We hope they will then be inspired to enter the 2016 Drysdale Glass Art Awards which will be part of the 2016 Festival of Glass” she added.

FoG in Winter is a mid-year reminder that the Festival of Glass will happen in February. It keeps local people, community groups and businesses interested in the Festival and invites them to become involved.

Locations and prices of events are on the Festival of Glass web site:

www.festivalofglass.net.au

Making lampwork glass beads

·      Sat. July 25 – Sun. July 26 (2 days)

Point Lonsdale

Glass fusing for beginners

·      Sat. July 25 10.00am – 2.00pm Leopold

·      Sun. July 25 10.00am – 2.00pm Leopold

Glass beadweaving projects

·      Making beaded beads. Sat. July 25

10.00am – 1.00pm Drysdale

·      ‘Fandangle’ pendant. Sat. July 25

2.00 – 5.00pm Drysdale

·      Bead embroidery – finishing off.

Sat. Aug. 17 3.00 – 5.00pm. Drysdale

Jewellery mending – the basics

·      Monday July 27 3.00pm – 5.00pm. Drysdale

Glassworker’s Open Studio

·      Sat. Aug. 1 11.00am – 4.00-pm Drysdale

Photographing glass at home

·      Sat. August 1 11.00am - 4.00pm Drysdale

Wed. August 5 11.00am – 4.00pm Drysdale

More information

(Tutors, prices, projects, locations, etc.)

festivalofglassdrysdale@gmail.com

Growing the market for Jablonec glass

In Jablonec’s glass industry, competition for market share is favouring larger, more industrialised firms, which use modern equipment to achieve economies of scale. The smaller firms’ reliance on pre-industrial methods of production makes it hard for them to attract the capital investment they need to compete with the larger firms on their own terms.

Individual survival

In Jablonec’s glass industry, several of the small firms don’t operate in a factory as such. Instead,

Pressing strings of beads, Jablonec

each firm’s operations are dispersed across a number of sites. These may include:

·      part or all of a building, which the firm rents to run the business, store and distribute its products and, perhaps run a shop

·      small workshops in rented premises

·      private homes in which people make the firm’s products on a ‘piecework’ basis (i.e. they are paid for each piece of glasswork that they produce).

When asked, “What one thing would enable you to develop your business?”, the owner of one of Jablonec’s small glass firms answered that he would really welcome capital with which to buy premises in which to gather his operations together in one place. This would bring him several benefits: his premises would be a capital asset, rather than a drain on income through rent; his control over his whole operation would increase; and he could build a narrative through which to market his products – “tell the whole story”, as he put it.

Glass beads get pearlescent coating - Jablonec

A bank would seem an obvious first stop for a company seeking capital to develop. However, that same owner said that the local banks are cautious and conservative lenders. Instead of backing small companies wishing to develop, they restrict their loans to larger, wealthier firms. As ever, the wealthier you are, the easier it is to become wealthier still; and the less you need to borrow money, the keener the banks are to lend you some!

Collaborative development?

Jablonec’s smaller glass firms need alternative business strategies if they are to survive the local banks’ intransigence and match their larger competitors’ economies of scale. For example, the area’s glass firms could collaborate to grow the market overall for Jablonec glass. However, the firms’ present single-minded focus on competing with each other – while necessary for their survival - precludes anything more than minimal collaboration between them.

Hand-making glass beads - Jablonec

There is a vehicle for such collaboration - the local glass industry association, to which many of Jablonec’s glass firms belong. However, the association restricts itself to assisting individual firms to attend trade shows and exhibitions. This reproduces the firms’ individual competition, rather than advancing the interests of the local industry as a whole, or even expressing a view about what those interests are.

New sources of investment

If Jablonec’s smaller glass firms decide to collaborate – within or alongside the local industry association – they could get around the local banks’ reluctance to invest in them by approaching two alternative funding sources: the Czech Ministry of Regional Development and the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund.

The Czech Ministry of Regional Development (www.mmr.cz/en/Homepage)

The Ministry is an obvious potential source of funds to develop Jablonec’s glass industry. However, its website (in English) doesn’t describe its day-to-day activities; and while it mentions the spending of money, there’s no indication as to what this money is spent on or the criteria by which it is spent. Perhaps a direct personal approach would elicit more useful, practical information.

European Regional Development Fund  (http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/funding/erdf/)

The ERDF aims to help reinforce economic and social cohesion by redressing regional imbalances and co-financing the conversion of declining industrial regions. It supports a rage of activities, including research, development and innovation; telecommunication, energy and transport infrastructures; and health, education and social infrastructures. In 2014 – 2020, ERDF support will concentrate on three themes:

·      research and innovation, including support to public research and innovation bodies and investment in technology and applied research in enterprises

·      creating and safeguarding sustainable jobs, through co-investment in small and medium-sized enterprises

·      climate change mitigation.

Clearly, the first two of those themes are relevant directly to the development of the glass industry in Jablonec.

Jablonec glass: from craft to industry

Today, hand-cut, engraved, blown and painted decorative glassware (from tableware and ornaments to chandeliers) from the former Bohemia is among the best known Czech exports and a favourite with tourists. This isn't to say, however, that it's a thriving industry.

Jablonec ("Yab-lon-etz") is a town of approx. 45,000 people in the Nisou Valley (the town's full name is Jablonec nad Nisou) north of Prague, in what used to be the kingdom of Bohemia. Together with neighbouring Moravia and Czech Silesia, Bohemia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until its fall in 1918, when the three territories were united as Czechoslovakia. Bohemia has long been famous for its glass.

In the 18th century, Bohemia displaced Venice as the centre of Europe's glass industry - especially through its 'trademark' cut-glass and cut-crystal. Over the next century, Venice fought to regain its pre-eminent position, introducing many innovations as it did so.

Bohemian glass suffered a real body blow when the Soviet-dominated Communist Party - which in 1948 instituted a one-party dictatorship of Czechoslovakia - pursued an aggressive policy of 'socialising' the glass industry, i.e. forcing hundreds of home-based glass workers into various forms of 'collective'. 1989's 'Velvet Revolution' replaced the Communist Party with a multi-party parliamentary democracy; and in 1993, Czechoslovakia split (peacefully) into The Czech Republic and Slovakia.


What next for Czech glass?

Semi-industrial glass blowing, Jablonec

In today's Jablonec, the glass industry is split between a large number of small, mostly home-based craft businesses and a smaller number of large industrial manufacturers and retailers. The larger businesses are able to achieve economies of scale which the smaller ones can't match - especially when cheap imports from China are flooding the global market.

On a recent visit to Jablonec, it appeared that unless there is major new investment in the smaller companies, they face significant decline. With them will go centuries-old traditions of glass working that today are maintained by a very small number of - often ageing - craftspeople.   

Jablonec glass - in search of a virtuous circle

Jablonec, in the Czech Republic, has been renowned for its glasswork for centuries. However, on a visit to the town in May 2015, it appeared that competition between the town’s glass businesses, compounded by an influx of cheaper glass products from China, is preventing Jablonec’s glass businesses from growing their market.

A 'factory house' in Jablonec

Jablonec (‘Yab-lon-etz’) began to develop as a centre of glass art in the Middle Ages, when it was part of Bohemia. By the eighteenth century, Bohemia had displaced Venice as the centre of Europe’s glass industry. Today, Jablonec’s glass industry consists of two broad sectors: several small manufacturers and a few large wholesalers. Between them, they make and sell glass sculptures, chandeliers, tableware, beads and buttons.

‘Zero sum’ competition

Competition in Jablonec’s glass industry - both within and between its two sectors - resembles a ‘zero sum’ game. Each business can only increase its share of the market (e.g. for glass beads and buttons) at the expense of other businesses, until only one business – or a small group – remains in each market.

In that ‘zero sum’ game, Jablonec’s smaller glass businesses find it hard to compete with the larger ones. The larger businesses use modern equipment and processes, achieving economies of scale that enable them to fill orders swiftly. Many of the smaller businesses rely for their income on a pool of glass workers whom they pay at ‘piecework’ rates (i.e. per piece, rather than per hour) to produce glasswork using centuries old techniques and tools - often in centuries old family premises.

Hand-making glass buttons in Jablonec

The smaller businesses’ reliance on old techniques and tools can make it hard for them to compete with the larger ones. This, in turn, limits their ability to replace their old equipment with modern versions; and this makes it harder for them to fill orders swiftly … and so on, in a vicious circle of competition.

Growing the market

An investment of fresh capital could break that vicious circle, but one small glass business owner said that the local banks are reluctant to lend money to smaller businesses; and anyway, the availability of that pool of home workers reduces the urgency of the search for investment.

However, unless something is done soon, the smaller glass businesses will start to go under. Their current glass workers know that their skills and techniques are centuries old, and that there is a good chance that their skills and techniques will die with them. They are an ageing population, working in conditions that often sit uneasily alongside contemporary health and safety concerns; and local young people are reluctant to take on the jobs because of the poor pay and conditions. So unless the smaller local businesses can devise new business models that will attract younger people, the glass industry in Jablonec will contract into a small number of large companies. The ‘zero sum’ game will be played to its end.

 

From vicious to virtuous circle

One alternative business model would be to grow the market overall, increasing the income of each company within it - “The rising tide lifts all the boats” as US President John Kennedy described it.

Simply growing the market would reproduce the current disparity in wealth between the industry’s large and small companies. However, the disparity would be at a higher level of income, increasing smaller companies’ ability to not just survive but to innovate and diversify their operations. This would strengthen Jablonec’s glass industry as a whole, turning the current vicious circle of competition into a virtuous circle of economic and cultural development that could keep alive the area’s traditions of glass art, craft and industry.