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‘‘A Mouthful of Zephyrs’: The Studio Glass Movement in Ireland, 1973-2003’

This (10,000 word) chapter was commissioned in 2009 following a series of articles McBrinn published on contemporary Irish craft and design in the Irish Arts Review (especially ‘A quiet renaissance: craft and design in Ireland 2004-2009’, Irish Arts Review, summer, 2009, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 112-115, ISSN 1649-217X). These articles drew attention to the high quality of contemporary Irish glassmaking and he was asked to expand and develop his ideas and write the first ever overview of Irish glass post-1970. The research question behind McBrinn’s text asked how the making of glass in Ireland was transformed from a context of industrial manufacture to individual studio practice between 1970 and 2000 and how work produced in Ireland reflected wider international developments in Britain, Europe, North American and Australia. Unlike other studio crafts in Ireland developments in glass directly, and contemporaneously, paralleled the medium’s international rise to prominence. Aside from offering some sort of critical and theoretical framework (relying on socio-economic, phenomenological and Feminist theoretical models) in which to assess Irish studio glass, this chapter also sought to challenge the widely-held belief that Irish studio glass has over the past forty years evolved in a hermetically sealed vacuum largely outside critical investigation and interrogation and had had no impact upon wider cultural developments. The international studio glass movement has itself only really evolved in the period from the early 1970s and, without question, Ireland has made a significant and distinctive contribution and built upon its uniquely rich heritage of industrial and artistic glassmaking. As a result of the publication of McBrinn’s text, in 2010, he was appointed to an advisory panel, jointly run by the National Museum of Ireland and the Crafts Council of Ireland, to advise on the purchase of a contemporary craft collection for the nation.