This copper alloy vessel from the sculpture series ‘113’ was made by Omer Arbel and Bocci as part of their performance installation in the John Madejski Garden at the V&A during the London Design Festival in September 2022. Over nine days an immersive glass-blowing studio was set up to produce a sculpture series entitled ‘113’. During the installation glass and copper alloy objects bought by Bocci at flea markets and antique shops in London were melted down and used to create a series of intricate sculptures to explore innovative approaches to material and manufacture and continue long histories of reuse in metalworking and glass production.

‘113’ is part of an ongoing series of experiments exploring the relationship between copper alloys and glass by interrogating the discrepancies between their material properties. To create the series a glass form was blown, and molten copper was poured into the hot glass vessel before being left to cool. Due to the differences in the two materials cooling rates, the glass form slowly shattered during the cooling process to leave behind the copper alloy form. When hot, the metal did not come into contact with oxygen on the glass side of the form meaning that a vivid iridescent outer surface was created with the multiple colours demonstrating the different alloys present in the object. This outer surface is in vivid contrast to the dark oxidised finish on the inside of the vessel. The intricate, lace-like form of the vessel was created by the flow of metal within the blown glass form. The bought objects were displayed and photographed on a plinth in the Santa Chiara Chapel in the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries prior to being moved to the garden for melting. At the end of each day the new sculptures were moved to the galleries for display alongside the other sculptures in the series and the objects yet to be melted down.

Omer Arbel is a multidisciplinary Canadian artist and the founder of design and research studio Bocci, whose work encompasses art, design, architecture and research. Arbel was born and raised in Jerusalem until age thirteen, when his family relocated to Vancouver, Canada. He received a BSc in environmental science from the University of Waterloo, Ontario in 1997 and began an apprenticeship with Catalan architect Enric Miralles the following year. Miralles’ death in 2000 brought Arbel back to Canada, where he completed his professional degree in architecture and began working at Patkau Architects in Vancouver.

Arbel typically embraces a research driven, collaborative methodology to interrogate the mechanical, physical and chemical properties of a chosen medium. Arbel titles all his work with a sequential numbering process that lends a scientific or algorithmic element to his practice whereby he views every material as worthy of exploration. Through his work he challenges the idea of authorship by allowing an understanding of material and the process of making to dictate the form. His interest in the molecular composition and transformation of materials reduces aesthetics to a secondary consideration, allowing him to embrace and exploit the chance and imperfection of the making process. Rather than setting out a defined objective, he instead devises a series of constraints within which the making happens. The ‘core’ recipe remains the same, but each outcome is different, purposefully unpredictable, and considered an equally valid expression of the design.

Bocci is a design and manufacturing company based in Vancouver and Berlin. Founded in 2005 under the creative directorship of Omer Arbel. Bocci is committed to fostering a lateral and open-ended relationship between creative direction and craft. Material Experiments was a collaboration between Omar Arbel and Bocci, under the creative direction of Arbel. In 2013 Arbel and Bocci presented a custom made chandelier 28.280 in the main atrium of the museum which explored a novel glass blowing technique and celebrated the magnificent architecture of the space.