You get a Rhythm about it: Peter Minson

YOU GET A RHYTHM
ABOUT IT
Peter Minson
Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre

YOU GET A RHYTHM
ABOUT IT
Peter Minson
Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre is supported by the
ACT Government, the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy –
an initiative of the Australian State and Territory
Governments, and the Australia Council for the Arts – the
Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory body.
Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre
Tues–Fri 10am–5pm
Saturdays 12–4pm
Level 1, North Building, 180 London Circuit,
Canberra ACT Australia
+61 2 6262 9333
www.craftact.org.au
Cover image: Peter Minson, Teapots, flameworked glass. Photo: Brenton McGeachie
Page 4-5: Peter Minson, Champagne flutes, flameworked glass. Photo: Brenton McGeachie
Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre
3 February - 19 March 2022
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You get a Rhythm about it
Exhibition statement
In recognition of his important
contribution to glass art and craft in
Australia, Craft ACT will present the work
of Peter Minson spanning his 60-year
career as a lampworker.
Coinciding with Craft ACT’s 50th
Anniversary, in 2021, the exhibition pays
respect to the history of glassmaking in
Australia and examines Minson’s work
through a contemporary lens.
Image: Peter Minson, Candelabra, flameworked
glass. Photo: Brenton McGeachie
Page 8-9: Peter Minson, Birds, flameworked
glass. Photo: Brenton McGeachie
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You get a Rhythm about it
Exhibition essay
“You get a rhythm about it”: Peter Minson
and the art of lampworking
The Natural History Museum in London
holds a model of a microscopic
marine organism called Aulosphaera
elegantissima Haeckel made in 1862
by the famous 19th century father and
son German lampworkers Leopold
and Rudolf Blaschka. Measuring just
22cm across, the model is around 500
times larger than the creature itself.
With its beautiful and impossibly fragile
radiating spines the Blaschka model
brings together everything that has
made lampworking – the process where
glass is manipulated by hand using a
concentrated flame, originally a lamp -
one of the world’s most fascinating glass
techniques.
The Blaschka model of the Aulosphaera e legantissima
Haeckel, 1862. Image copyright of the Trustees of the
Several museums around the world hold
collections of the Blaschka models.
The Corning Museum of Glass in New
York, USA even holds Rudolf Blaschka’s
work bench. The Botanical Museum
of Harvard University also holds a
significant holding of Blaschka models
called the Ware Collection, which
Minson had the opportunity to study first
hand in 1995 when he won a Churchill
Fellowship. To this day, he says, nobody
really knows exactly how the father and
son made their models as they kept their
processes a well-guarded secret. But
being able to examine the models did
change the way Minson thought about
his own work, especially the possibilities
of assembling complex shapes from
multiple parts. It also confirmed the rich
connections between the sciences and
the arts that is lampworking’s special
heritage.
During the late 19th and early 20th
century the work of the Blaschkas
and other model makers was in high
demand. Research into the natural
sciences was expanding. Glass models
were more practical and robust than
traditional taxidermy. Lampworking skills
were also needed for the production
of scientific apparatus as well as an
ever growing number of industrial
components. Well into the 20th century
an apprenticeship in scientific glass
blowing offered a lifelong career, as did
membership of a lampworking family
business. Quite a few of our pioneering
lampworking artists first trained as
scientific glass blowers either in industry
or through family connections.
Minson, one of the first artists to
specialize in studio lampworking in
Australia, learnt scientific glass blowing
as a 16 year old apprentice at the Sydney
based Minson Scientific Company
which his grandfather James Minson
established in Australia in the early
1930s to manufacture medical and
scientific glassware. Minson’s father and
uncle were also involved in the business,
making him a third generation scientific
glass blower.
As an employee of the factory one of
Minson’s first jobs was to make test
tubes from glass tubing: five hundred a
day, hand blown by torch at the bench.
“You get a rhythm about it”, said Minson,
“it trained your eyes”.
This type of training built Minson’s
intuitive feel for the material. Fellow
lampworker Mark Eliott, who first learnt
lampworking at the factory under
Minson, described the whole process
of making multiples by hand as a zen
exercise where the mind and the body
work seamlessly together. For Eliott,
who recalls making 4000 dolphins for
Greenpeace Australia from his own
studio sometime in the late 1980s,
the process brings an awareness that
through each minute variation in this
technical dance one can pay homage
to the infinite complexity of the natural
world.
Minson quickly moved into managerial
roles within the company. By the early
70s, however, he was also experimenting
with blowing his own creations in glass,
having built a furnace in 1972 using
information gathered from books.
Minson Scientific Company factory in Cascade Street,
Paddington, Sydney around 1958-59. Photo courtesy
of the artist.
Minson Scientific Company factory in Cascade Street,
Paddington, Sydney around 1958-59. Photo courtesy
of the artist.
Natural History Museum”.
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Minson recalls all this was based on
trial and error. In the ensuing years
some general practical guidance and
inspiration came through a number of
international touring glass exhibitions.
Minson recalls seeing the American
artist Bill Boysen blow glass during
his Australian tour in 1974 1. Minson
developed an ongoing friendship with
designer Göran Wärff whom he first
met when the then Kosta-Boda designer
travelled to Australia in conjunction with
the exhibition Adventure in Swedish
Glass 2. Wärff, known for acknowledging
the skills of master craftsmen,
responded to Minson’s adventurous
spirit. Minson, in turn, welcomed the
chance to trade ideas with the designer.
The connection later took Minson to
Sweden to spend six months studying at
the Orrefors Glass School.
Minson decommissioned his furnace
in 1978 and turned to full-time
lampworking. In addition to Minson
and Eliott, fellow pioneer lampworkers
at the time included Stan Melis, who
had trained in Czechoslovakia and
subsequently set up a lampworking
studio in Sydney before moving to the
glass workshop at the Jam Factory,
Centre for Craft and Design, Adelaide in
1976; and Richard Clements, who had
completed a five year apprenticeship in
scientific glass blowing in London before
migrating to Australia in 1970. Clements
spent a brief period working with
Minson, along with John Schunman and
Philip Broadbelt. Clements, Schunman
and Broadbelt subsequently established
Argyle Glass in The Rocks, Sydney in
1972, one of the first workshops in
Australia to give public lampworking
demonstrations. Clements later
established his own studio, Chameleon
Glass, in Franklin, Tasmania.
The tradition of public lampworking
demonstrations was given a boost, as
was lampworking in general, with the
Flame on Glass annual exhibitions at
Kirra Galleries mounted between 2003
and 2017. The exhibitions, initiated
through discussions between Australian
lampworking artists Christian Arnold and
Mark Eliott, and the gallery’s manager
and curator Suzanne Brett, were one
of the few events to exclusively feature
lampworking. Minson and colleagues
would set up outside the gallery and
entertain the passing crowds in the
Atrium of Melbourne’s Federation
Square.
Minson’s early work fell into that
wonderful mix of novelty and curios that
has delighted the public imagination
for centuries. Glass in the popular
“façon de Venise”, or “after the Venetian
fashion”, of the 16th and 17th century in
Europe, for example, rejoiced in cleverly
incorporating mythical creatures,
miniature animals and graceful sylphs
into designs for glass tableware.
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Maidens with upstretched arms formed
the stems of goblets. Dragons and
serpents twisted to form handles and
rims. It was all pure entertainment. If you
are wondering about the inclusion of sea
horses, octopus tentacles, swans and
naked ladies in Minson’s work the clues
are here in these wonderful precedents.
Joan Brassil, ‘Stranger in the Landscape’ 1983-1985,
2015, Cement, Copper, Copper slag, Ceramic brass
mesh, Brass, Sand, Bark, organic matter, glass elements,
Dimensions variable, Image courtesy Campbelltown
City Council collection. Photo by Simon Hewson
Over the years Minson’s work expanded
into traditional functional ware,
sculptural pieces and small vessels.
One side of Minson’s glass which is less
well known is his collaborative work
with other Australian artists. In 1982
he worked with mulit-media artist Joan
Brassil for her work Strangers in the
Landscape, first presented by Roslyn
Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney in 1983 and
later purchased by the Orange Regional
Gallery. In this work of three installations
Brassil included three large hour glass
forms made by Minson, one of which
was combined with slumped glass by
Sydney glass artist Maureen Cahill.
The hour glass shapes worked well
as a metaphor as Brassil explored the
passage of time and associated changes
in how landscape is perceived. 3
Another collaboration, this time with
Perth-based artist Donna Franklin for
two installations Mycotroph (2010) and
Systematic Network of Neo-liberalism
(2015), with metal work contributed
by Simone Hicks, examined the
natural environment from a different
perspective. Minson created glass
receptacles in which Franklin cultured
living fungi for the installations. Franklin
used the combination of art and life
sciences to question the ethics of recent
developments in biotechnology. As the
work emphasised the close connection
between arts and sciences, Franklin
noted that Minson’s artistic lineage as a
third generation scientific lampworker
was an essential element in its reading. 4
Systemic Network of Neo-liberalism, 2015, Donna
Franklin in collaboration with Simone Hicks and Peter
Minson. Recycled copper, borosilicate (laboratory
glass), nutrients, Pycnoporus coccineus, Fusarium.
Parasitic Hosts, 2021, Cullity Gallery, School of Design,
The University of Western Australia. Image courtesy of
the artist.
This year Minson was formally
recognised by The Churchill Trust
Board for his ongoing and outstanding
contribution over many years to the
work of the association which he had
first come to know as a recipient of their
fellowship in 1995, the one which took
him to Harvard University to see the
Blaschka models. The official citation
noted he had been a dedicated member
of the organisation’s ACT Committee
“for longer than our records show”. The
same sentiment applies to the longevity
and significance of his contribution to
Australian lampworking.
Written by Nola Anderson.
Nola is a scholar, writer, freelance
consultant in the arts and museum sector
and former assistant director at the
Australian War Memorial.
1 In 1974 Bill Boysen, from the University of Illinois,
toured his mobile workshop to New South Wales,
Queensland and the ACT.
2 Adventure in Swedish Glass: 16 artists from
Kosta-Boda and Orrefors, an exhibition rom
Svenska Slöjdföreningne, the Swedish Society for
Industrial Design, 1975, Australian Gallery Director’s
Conference.
3 Brassil, Rita Joan. “The poetic vision.” (1991).
4 Franklin, Donna. Meaningful Encounters: Creating a
multi-method site for interacting with nonhuman life
through bioarts praxis. (2014).
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Peter Minson
Biography
Peter Minson is a third-generation
glassblower based in Binalong, NSW.
Studying as a scientific glassblower
Minson’s practice has evolved to include
artistic and functional work. Minson’s
delicate teapots, cups, and glasses
are a testament to his great skill as a
glassblower. Minson’s work has been
exhibited at Craft ACT, Kirra Galleries and
Glass Artist’ Gallery. He has taught at the
ANU School of Art and RMIT University.
Image:
Page 16-21: Peter Minson, Champagne flutes +
tableware, flameworked glass. Photos: Brenton
McGeachie
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List of works
1 Urn #5,
flameworked glass, 165 x 38
(dia) mm
$175
6 Trinket Box #5, 1982
flameworked glass
NFS
11 Vase #3, 1982
flameworked glass, 79 x 96 (dia)
mm
$250
16 Teapot #1
flameworked glass, 105 x 114 x
60 mm
$50
2 Urn #2,
flameworked glass, 143 x 33
(dia) mm
$200
7 Trinket Box #3, 1988
flameworked glass
NFS
12 Cup #6, 1982
flameworked glass, 68 x 55 (dia)
mm
$200
17 Jug #1
flameworked glass, 85 x 80 x 53
mm
$35
3 Urn #7,
flameworked glass, 130 x 47
(dia) mm
$170
8 Stoppered Vessel #12, 1982
flameworked glass, 135 x 60
(dia) mm
$250
13 Cup #3, 1982
flameworked glass, 40 x 40 (dia)
mm
$180
18 Shaker #2
flameworked glass, 85 x 40 (dia)
mm
$15
4 Urn #1,
flameworked glass, 130 x 37
(dia) mm
$200
9 Stoppered Vessel #14, 1987
flameworked glass, 235 x 46
(dia) mm
$250
14 Teapot #5
flameworked glass, 146 x 160 x
100 mm
$78
19 Shaker #3
flameworked glass, 85 x 45 (dia)
mm
$15
5 Trinket Box #6, 1988
flameworked glass
NFS
10 Stoppered Vessel #9, 1987
flameworked glass, 143 x 55 x
40 mm
$250
15 Teapot #2
flameworked glass, 122 x 140 x
70 mm
$65
20 Cup #1, 2020
flameworked glass, 72 x 68 x 45
mm
$32
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List of works
21 Trinket Box #4, 1997
flameworked glass, 78 x 66 (dia)
mm
$150
26 Ship in a Bottle #2
flameworked glass, 105 x 245 x
110 mm
$390
31 Goblet #21
flameworked glass
NFS
36 Swan #6
flameworked glass
NFS
22 Trinket Box #8, 1998
flameworked glass
NFS
27 Goblet #6, 2002
flameworked glass
NFS
32 Bird #2, 2005
flameworked glass
NFS
37 Decanter #1, 2017
flameworked glass, 470 x 100
(dia) mm
$700
23 Trinket Box #4, 1997
flameworked glass, 78 x 66 (dia)
mm
$150
28 Swan #3
flameworked glass
NFS
33 Royal Spoonbill
flameworked glass, 307 x 75 x
290 mm
$600
38 Swan #2,
flameworked glass
NFS
24 Trinket Box #7, 1988
flameworked glass
NFS
29 Stoppered Vessel #5, 2018
flameworked glass, 500 x 120
(dia) mm
$750
34 Bird #3, 2002
flameworked glass
NFS
39 Goblet #9, 2016
flameworked glass, 287 x 120
(dia) mm
$225
25 Candelabra #2, 2019
flameworked glass, 525 x 170 x
175 mm
$780
30 Swan #1
flameworked glass
NFS
35 Goblet #8, 2002
flameworked glass, 387 x 100
(dia) mm
$1,860
40 Swan #5
flameworked glass
NFS
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List of works
41 Masted Galleon
flameworked glass, 315 x 330 x
160 mm
$650
46 Teapot #3, 1975
flameworked glass, 109 x 115 x
66 mm
$50
51 Stoppered Vessel #1, 1990
flameworked glass, 85 x 83 x
50 mm
$150
56 Urn #10
flameworked glass, 106 x 45
(dia) mm
$150
42 Candelabra #1
flameworked glass, 260 x 200 x
180 mm
$700
47 Vessel #2
flameworked glass, 100 x 50 x
90 mm
$18
52 Vase #2, 1982
flameworked glass, 140 x 115
(dia) mm
$550
57 Ship in a Bottle #2
flameworked glass, 110 x 250 x
95 mm
$390
43 Bottle #2, 1975
flameworked glass, 189 x 115 x
76 mm
$800
48 Vessel #1
flameworked glass, 95 x 55 x 94
mm
$18
53 Vase #1, 1982
flameworked glass, 104 x 87
(dia) mm
$750
58 Urn #6
flameworked glass, 133 x 35
(dia) mm
$175
44 Bottle #1, 1975
flameworked glass, 141 x 95 x
55 mm
$750
49 Stoppered Vessel #4, 1982
flameworked glass, 170 x 68 x
35 mm
$180
54 Urn #3
flameworked glass, 120 x 40
(dia) mm
$185
59 Urn #4
flameworked glass, 140 x 45
(dia) mm
$200
45 Teapot #4, 1975
flameworked glass, 142 x 165 x
100 mm
$77
50 Stoppered Vessel #10, 1989
flameworked glass, 76 x 50 (dia)
mm
$110
55 Urn #9
flameworked glass, 95 x 45 (dia)
mm
$150
60 Urn #12
flameworked glass, 88 x 43 (dia)
mm
$140
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List of works
61 Urn #11
flameworked glass, 75 x 40 (dia)
mm
$150
66 Goblet #14, 1993
flameworked glass
NFS
71 Goblet #11, 1993
flameworked glass
NFS
76 Goblet #15
flameworked glass
NFS
62 Urn #8
flameworked glass, 110 x 40
(dia) mm
$150
67 Goblet #17, 2018
flameworked glass, 203 x 65
(dia) mm
$120
72 Goblet #5, 2018
flameworked glass, 222 x 64
(dia) mm
$125
77 Goblet #2
flameworked glass, 100 x 40
(dia) mm
$50
63 Goblet #3
flameworked glass
NFS
68 Goblet #7, 2010
flameworked glass, 231 x 72
(dia) mm
$125
73 Goblet #16, 2018
flameworked glass, 156 x 50
(dia) mm
$75
78 Goblet #20, 1986
flameworked glass
NFS
64 Goblet #4, 2019
flameworked glass, 193 x 72
(dia) mm
$160
69 Goblet #18, 1997
flameworked glass
NFS
74 Goblet #15,
flameworked glass
NFS
79 Goblet #19, 2002
flameworked glass
NFS
65 Goblet #12, 2001
flameworked glass
NFS
70 Goblet #1
flameworked glass
NFS
75 Goblet #10, 2006
flameworked glass
NFS
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