Stewart Hearn T/A London Glassworks & Kathryn Hearn Ceramics
As a person who is not very keen on using social media, I will agree that it does have its advantages at times. I follow a number of glass makers in various fields on Facebook including hot glass, architectural/stained glass, fused glass, and glass sculptures. I became aware of Stewart & Kathryn Hearn's Open Studio Day in July where Stewart would be demonstrating some hot glass techniques and Kathryn would be hand-building some ceramic sculptures from their studios in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire. As a glass and ceramics student I deemed it would be useful to both see their work first-hand as well as their studio set up. It was along drive to get there and they must have chosen one of the hottest days of the year. The studio consists of several buildings next to their home and there is a dedicated small hot shop, separate cold working room and an adjoining small room from which sales are managed.
Stewart and his assistant Alex Pearce, a former craft student from De Montford University in Leicester, demonstrated how one of Stewart's recent pieces, a glass chandelier had been constructed. Stewart explained the steps involved using terms and techniques I recognized from my own brief encounter with hot glass. He made some blown pieces that he then flattened into ship-like shapes. When combined in multiples of approximately 60 of these these are hooked onto a circular tapering metal frame to form a transparent blue chandelier. Each was piece was made using clear glass that was coloured using powdered glass frits. For each layer of the chandelier, more powder was added, strengthening the depth of the colour so that the final structure was graduated. The piece was inspired by Stewart visiting Ely cathedral known locally as the 'ship of the fens' and as such he has named the piece The Ely Chandelier.
Kathryn's work is somewhat opposite in comparison to Stewart's in that it is largely uncoloured. She hand builds tall pot-like sculptures intended to be visual rather than functional in the traditional sense, representing the surrounding landscape. She was telling me how a talk with a farmer had inspired her building technique, describing how there is always land that is left unploughed around the edge of a field. Like many ceramicists, she make her own tools out of wire and in this case used the wire to pull through clay, creating a sausage that turns inwards on itself as though ploughed. She then layers these loosely and every now and again creates loops that she later adds inclusions to that represent the strata of the earth.
