Jellyfish installation
Installation
2010 (made)
2010 (made)
Artist/Maker | |
Place of origin |
Steffen Dam trained and worked as a toolmaker before he turned his attention to glass. The uncompromising nature of this material exactly fitted the precise and analytic way of thinking he was taught when constructing industrial tools.
While working as a glass-maker, Steffen became interested in the aesthetics of unplanned faults and irregularities caused during the making process. He learned to explore and enhance the subtle beauty of air bubbles, ash marks, soot residue, cracks and crookedness. With complete mastery, he now combines these impurities with metallic oxides and foils to create wonderfully subtle three dimensional pictures within a solid form of colourless glass.
Steffen Dam finds inspiration in historic cabinets of curiosities and taxonomic collections of specimens preserved in alcohol in glass vials and bottles. His Jellyfish installation is an example of his 'Marine Biology' series. In which he conjures up all sorts of sea-creatures within a solid cylinder of glass.
While working as a glass-maker, Steffen became interested in the aesthetics of unplanned faults and irregularities caused during the making process. He learned to explore and enhance the subtle beauty of air bubbles, ash marks, soot residue, cracks and crookedness. With complete mastery, he now combines these impurities with metallic oxides and foils to create wonderfully subtle three dimensional pictures within a solid form of colourless glass.
Steffen Dam finds inspiration in historic cabinets of curiosities and taxonomic collections of specimens preserved in alcohol in glass vials and bottles. His Jellyfish installation is an example of his 'Marine Biology' series. In which he conjures up all sorts of sea-creatures within a solid cylinder of glass.
Object details
Categories | |
Object type | |
Parts | This object consists of 7 parts.
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Title | Jellyfish installation (assigned by artist) |
Materials and techniques | Glass, silver foil and carbon layers, hot-sculpted at the furnace, cast in a cylinder in a sand moulds, ground and fire polished, foot and lid attached with UV glue |
Brief description | Jellyfish installation, a group of seven solid glass forms, shaped as specimen jars, made by Steffen Dam, Handrup (Ebeltoft), Denmark, 2010 |
Physical description | Jellyfish installation, a group of seven cyllindrical solid glass forms, shaped as specimen jars with attached glass feet and lids. With silver foil and carbon layers, hot-sculpted, cast in a cylinder in a sand mould, ground and fire-polished, to create jellyfish forms within the solid glass form. |
Dimensions |
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Gallery label | Steffen Dam (Born 1961)
Jellyfish installation
2010
In this work, Steffen Dam has replicated with remarkable verisimilitude the specimen jars found in natural history collections. Dam’s interest lies in the aesthetics of faults and irregularities caused during the making process. He enhances and controls these using metallic oxides and foils to create subtle three dimensional pictures within a solid form of colourless glass.
Denmark (Handrup, Ebeltoft)
Glass, silver foil and carbon layers, sculpted at the furnace, sand-cast into colourless glass, ground and fire polished, attached foot and lid.
Museum no. C.92-2011. Purchased with support of the Friends of the V&A
(5/3/2014) |
Credit line | Supported by the Friends of the V&A |
Object history | This installation was shown by Joanna Bird at the Collect 2011, London. |
Summary | Steffen Dam trained and worked as a toolmaker before he turned his attention to glass. The uncompromising nature of this material exactly fitted the precise and analytic way of thinking he was taught when constructing industrial tools. While working as a glass-maker, Steffen became interested in the aesthetics of unplanned faults and irregularities caused during the making process. He learned to explore and enhance the subtle beauty of air bubbles, ash marks, soot residue, cracks and crookedness. With complete mastery, he now combines these impurities with metallic oxides and foils to create wonderfully subtle three dimensional pictures within a solid form of colourless glass. Steffen Dam finds inspiration in historic cabinets of curiosities and taxonomic collections of specimens preserved in alcohol in glass vials and bottles. His Jellyfish installation is an example of his 'Marine Biology' series. In which he conjures up all sorts of sea-creatures within a solid cylinder of glass. |
Associated object | |
Bibliographic reference | The Corning Museum of Glass, 2012. 'New Glass Review 33. The Corning Museum of Glass', New York, p. 106. |
Collection | |
Accession number | C.92:1 to 7-2011 |
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Record created | November 9, 2011 |
Record URL |
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