Glass is Tomorrow: Meisenthal 1

— February, 15 2016

July 2012
Designers: Werner Aisslinger, Lena Bergström, Tim Brauns, Tina Bunyaprasit, Sebastien Cordoleani,
Verena Gompf, Sebastian Herkner, Studio Brichet-Ziegler – Pierre Brichet & Caroline Ziegler, Studio Olgoj Chorchoj – Michal Froněk & Jan Němeček
Glassblowers: Antoine Brodin, CIAV Blowers, CIV blowers, Michal Masek, Sébastien Maurer, Jean-Marc Schilt, Verreum Blowers, Jeremy Wintrebert
Partners: CIAV
Meisenthal has long been know as the cradle of Art Nouveau glass and the glassworks that enabled
Emile Gallé as well as René Lalique to revolutionise the glass industry. This tradition for innovation lives on. The Centre International d’Arts Verriers [CIAV] was created in 1992 in order to preserve regional glassmaking skills found in north-eastern France. While giving room for new contemporary perspectives on traditional branches of the glass industry, the centre remains in constant contact with the region as the heir to five-centuries of glassmaking in the northern Vosges.
The mould is a fundamental tool that offers the possibility of reproduction. It allows an object, a form, or function to be repeated but also opens the door to perspective economic developments. CIAV’s mould library counts around 1500 ancient steel and wood iterations. Some come from local glassworks that have since closed, that CIAV retrieved in 1998 and 1999. The goal of this workshop was to question, through the fresh eyes of contemporary designers and makers, the ancient typologies of the moulds preserved at CIAV. Often these moulds correspond to well-know ‘art de la table’ objects. The objective was to invite designers and blowers to re-interpret the existing moulds with new meaning and to offer them not yet been explored innovative functionalities.