Just a dash

With Harmonie Begon, Tiphaine Fevre, Sandrine Isambert and Thibaut Nussbaumer.

Project published in New Glass Review 42, the annual publication featuring the most timely and innovative projects in glass, curated by Corning Museum Of Glass (CMOG)

Project led during the workshop dedicated to Glass taking part of the 2021 edition of the “Skills Academy”, a program by the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès. A multidisciplinary team composed of glassmakers, designers & engineers gathered around various projects during a global workshop, held in the CIRVA HotShop in Marseille, led by the designer Noé Duchaufour Lawrance.

“Just a dash” is a series of solid glass spheres, that mix clear studio glass and industrial glass in their making.
Presented as a collection of swatches, as various ways of associating the two incompatible materials using hot glass techniques, each type of pattern proposes a gradient of declinations, from the the tiniest “dash” of green glass included in the piece, to a larger proportion, thus seeking the limit of this tensed cohabitation, up to the breaking point.

Once cooled down, all of the spheres were photographed under a polariscope, that reveals the resulting stress in each piece.

As a nod to the city’s identity, “Just a dash” takes on the form of a “Pétanque” ball set, and the industrial glass that was melted in a dedicated furnace came from collected “Pastis” bottles from all over the town.

The instal (in which each sphere is displayed with a polarizing back lighting) allows the spectator to look at the collection through a polarizing filter, that reveals the resulting stress in each piece.

Every two years since 2014, the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès has invited craftspeople, designers and engineers to take part in the Skills Academy. With a strong emphasis on collective intelligence, this programme aims to undertake broad explorations of universal materials by bringing together prospective visions and the transmission of skills.

An adept of glass, designer Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance was the pedagogical director of the fifth edition of the Skills Academy. By selecting this transdisciplinary theme, the Foundation sought to approach the arts of glassmaking in all their richness and complexity. The Academy looked to (re)discover and explore the historical, symbolic and aesthetic resonance of glass, as well as its chemical and physical properties and its economic and social dimensions.

The Academy laureates were invited to put their expertise into practice explore prospective avenues in a collective workshop, at the International Glass and Visual Arts Research Centre (CIRVA) in Marseille. Here, the participants worked with industrial glass from bottles as part of a craft-based approach to recycling infused with the context of the port city.