In the studio of Philip Baldwin and Monica Guggisberg in the hills of mid Wales, my eye is drawn by a grouping of five black-and-white figures which are about to take centre stage in their exhibition You, Me and the Rest of Us at Galleri Glas. Elegant and austere yet at the same time sensual, with curved bodies, the forms have been finished using the battuto technique – a cutting of the surface of the blown glass to add texture and enhance its opacity. The figures, which appear to challenge and respond to one another, as if acknowledging a group dynamic, mark a turning point – a more political direction – in Baldwin & Guggisberg's practice.
The exhibition's title is taken from a work they made last year, which laid bare the iniquity of the ever-increasing gap between rich and poor. It continues a conversation their last exhibition started: given the challenges of the world we live in, how do we find the right balance in society between an individual’s needs and those of the community?
You, Me and the Rest of Us marks a development of, and commentary on, Baldwin & Guggisberg’s magnum opus Under an Equal Sky, a series of ten installations shown at Canterbury Cathedral in 2018, the centrepiece of which was a 20-metre boat made in part to commemorate the centenary of the World War One Armistice. That exhibition’s themes of migration, diversity and community spoke of many of the major events in mankind’s story over the past hundred years – themes the artists themselves identify with, as migrants with roots in the US, Switzerland and Italy. When they first met, Philip had a degree in history and political science from the American University in Washington, D.C., while Monica had been engaged in lampworking in Switzerland for four years. Their collaboration as artists and partners has since taken them all over the world, and led them to set up studios throughout Europe.
The opportunity to stage an exhibition in Canterbury Cathedral was, says Philip, 'thrilling' but it also presented a serious challenge. The building is England’s largest and most historic religious sanctuary, a magnificent medieval structure famed for its cavernous nave, its aisles and towers and the site of one of the most notorious events in English history, the assassination in 1170 of Thomas Becket. It is also a world heritage site. The white space of Galleri Glas comes as a relief after all that history, allowing a closer, more studied exposé of some of the ideas that Canterbury provoked.
Philip Baldwin (b. 1947) and Monica Guggisberg (b. 1955) are widely recognised as two of the elite among today’s international artists working in glass. After 40 years and dozens of international museum exhibitions, this show marks their return to Sweden, the country where their collaboration began. They met in 1979 in Småland’s Kingdom of Crystal – he was from New York, and she from Bern, Switzerland. Both had been students at the Orrefors glass school that year and it was there that their professional and personal partnership took off. The strength of Baldwin & Guggisberg’s working relationship lies not only in their differing approaches to the creative process but in their ability to harmonise their thinking through their complementary skills.
Monica tends to kick off the process by making sketches – and by drawing and painting – she enjoys thinking with a pen or brush in her hand; while Philip prefers to look for solutions on the back of an envelope or through trial and error.
The resulting works are signed by both artists, and an outsider would find it difficult, if not impossible, to determine the originator of an idea. Any ambivalence or disagreement thrown up during the making process remains obscured; and their individual creativity merges into the finished piece. The first major monograph on their work, Philip Baldwin, Monica Guggisberg: In Search of Clear Lines by Susanne K. Frantz and Jean-Luc Olivié (Benteli Verlag, Bern: 1998), contains a description of their working partnership:
“We work in a world of interconnections. It’s a kind of three-dimensional tic-tac-toe universe in which events may appear to have a beginning, middle and end, but which may actually happen simultaneously, as if life itself were a hologram in which the past, present and future are intermingled. Whether or not one agrees with such a definition of things, it is plain that we are all constantly being influenced by the events and people and ideas that are perpetually swirling around us. Over the years we have tried to understand what it is we do and to ascribe meaning to it. For us this is harder than the work itself, for the work itself is organic and spontaneous and follows a trajectory all of its own.”
Baldwin & Guggisberg’s artistic evolution falls into distinct phases: first, their time at the Orrefors glass school and their two years as interns in the newly-opened glass studio in Transjö with master glassblower Wilke Adolfsson and designer/artist Ann Warff (later Wolff), two Swedish pioneers of the growing international studio glass movement, and a useful business model for Philip and Monica. Next, their objective was to find a space in which to develop their own work. They settled on the Swiss village of Nonfoux, north of Lausanne, where they lived for the following twenty years. The plan was primarily to make utility glass while developing the concept of form, function, economy and beauty, a focus borrowed from the cultural environs of Småland and Scandinavia. But they challenged themselves to push further, to confront head-on the problem of repetition (the strengths and weaknesses of serial production) and to find space for personal expression. At first their aim was to achieve flawlessness – to create, for example, a dozen perfect wine glasses; to achieve technical mastery. They describe how the glassblowing process became almost akin to a meditative process as they sought to reach a level of disciplined consistency similar to the practice of yoga.
Then, in the 1980s, the glass industry in Sweden underwent a crisis. Newly trained glassblowers or designers were no longer being offered positions at the major glassworks, as they had been previously. The crisis arose primarily because of competition from machine production in less expensive labour markets – large series being turned out at low prices. But the problems were also down to a growing distaste for the monotony of serial production: a knowledgeable clientele longed for individual expression. Interest in genuine craftsmanship, quality and history in turn encouraged the auction houses to shine a light on glass: early modernism became as coveted as centuries-old antiques. Art glass pieces from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s started to fetch sky-high prices, becoming gold mines for owners. With Post-modernism in its infancy, international interest in contemporary glass was in the ascendancy.
Young glass artists made pilgrimages to the glass school at Pilchuck outside Seattle where American studio glass artist Dale Chihuly and his hand-picked team encouraged more experimental work in smaller series. He attracted American and European master glassblowers, among them some of the most talented and experienced teachers around. From Murano, Venice, he recruited master blowers with superb technical knowledge. Thus Pilchuck inspired two different impulses: one narrative and expressive; the other based on technical craftsmanship.
Monica and Philip, meanwhile, felt connected to European traditions and techniques. Their only formal training in the field had been at the Orrefors school and their two-year internship with Wilke Adolfsson and Ann Wolff. But by studying the work of people they admired they started to develop the foundations of their artistic sensibility. The roll-call of names gives an insight into Baldwin & Guggisberg's evolving aesthetics: Finns Alvar Aalto, Kaj Franck and Tapio Wirkkala; Italy's Paolo Venini, who worked in turn with Fulvio Bianconi; Carlo Scarpa; and Sweden’s Tyra Lundgren. Seven phenomenal gurus, a list that should also include – in addition to Adolfsson and Warff – two Italian masters from Murano: Lino Tagliapietra and Paolo Ferro. It was Ferro who taught them the battuto technique – how to carve into glass.
Baldwin & Guggisberg have subsequently developed the technique further by combining classic Orrefors overlay with Italian cutting: the work begins with blown glass layers in various colours; contrasts are then created – texture and pattern – by cutting through the outer layers to reveal matte sections and a surface that is both tactile and visually compelling.
As an adjective, battuto means a surface that has been struck or hammered a number of times. As a noun, battuta is a musical term meaning the beat of a conductor's baton, feet or hands to determine a tempo.
[NOTE TO DESIGNER – INSERT PUBLICATION REFERENCE TO THE ABOVE QUOTE AS A FOOTNOTE OR ENDNOTE] 1 Devoto, Giacomo and Oli, Gian Carlo, 'Il Dizionario della Lingua Italiana', Casa Editrice Flce Le Monnier S.p.A., Firenze, 2000, p228; cited Berndt, Louise, 'Battuto 2002 – Sculptures by Monica Guggisberg and Philip Baldwin' [catalogue], Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, Denmark, 2002, p18
Monica and Philip's Italian work and travels have been crucial influences on their artistic and technical expression. When we met at their studio in Wales, Monica was planning the latest of the countless trips they’ve taken to Venice over the past 25 years. If Scandinavia has informed their respect for economy and socio-politics, then it is Venice that has given them an environment in which to thrive creatively and technically. With its luminous light and vibrant colours, Venice – and Italy – has become a kind of second home to Monica and Philip. Fundamental to their developing technical know-how in the early days was their relationship with the glassworks Venini. Venini had its own Scandinavian connections, thanks to founder Paolo Venini's contacts and early interest in Scandinavian glass. Inspired by Orrefors and Finnish glassworks, Venini had sought out artists for its newly launched glass facility, inviting Tyra Lundgren and Tapio Wirkkala to work with them.
More significant for Baldwin & Guggisberg's later development was the Italian glassworks' collaboration with Fulvio Bianconi and Carlo Scarpa, who was responsible for reviving the ancient technique of battuto.
The latter two pushed the development of technique by processing the glass in different layers of colour and in soft shapes; but it is Scarpa's razor-sharp style, and the architectural quality it gave his vessels, that is particularly apparent in Baldwin & Guggisberg's work.
From the start Baldwin & Guggisberg were drawn to strong colours and archetypal shapes. They worked in a quasi constructivist spirit, with a precision and preference for simplified forms associated with the Bauhaus and a fascination for colour and line, such as they had found in the abstract work of Wassily Kandinsky. Monica and Philip recall an encounter with the painter’s work at an exhibition in the 1980s as transformative – inspiring their take on modernism.
Back in their studio in Nonfoux Monica and Philip shifted their focus from making glassware to one-off glass objects, while drawing on the respect for craftsmanship and technique they had learned from their work with Wilke Adolfsson and Lino Tagliapietra. For the young artists, using layers of colour in their work was a way of encouraging their own experimentation, while the cutting produced unexpected, often revelatory, results.
The glass industry soon started to take note of developments in Nonfoux: Germany’s porcelain and glass manufacturer Rosenthal; in America, Steuben; in Switzerland, Glasi Hergiswil; in Italy, Venini. All engaged Baldwin & Guggisberg as designers over the years, although their collaboration formed just a small part of the duo's overall output. A more recent collaboration has been with Nouvel Studio in Mexico City.
Moving from making archetypal bowls to spheres and amphorae may not seem that big a step, but the charged symbolism of these forms opened up new possibilities and showing contexts. When a Swiss museum in 1998 invited them to put on an exhibition, the challenge was how to think of the space as a whole, as an installation. Monica made sketches of pod-like shapes and archetypal symbols for boats, which became a key theme. Referencing Lynn Anderson's 1970s pop tune, they called the exhibition at Bern's Kunsthalle We never promised you a rose garden. With hindsight, they now see that this body of work marked the origin of their migration theme – of an emblematic crossing of time and space. The idea developed further following an invitation from Venice to participate in the major glass exhibition, Venezia Aperto Vetro, its theme being work that connected with the city’s history. The result was Guardians and Courtesans, which was to become a significant part of Baldwin & Guggisberg’s growing body of work.
Another prestigious early assignment was a commission in 2000 from the food group Nestlé for its headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland. The HQ’s 1960s glass and concrete architecture, designed by architect Jean Tschumi, was being renovated and modernised by architects Jacques Richter and Ignacio Dahl Rocha. Using the battuto technique, Baldwin & Guggisberg created a hugely ambitious one-tonne glass monolith carved with intricate geometric and organic shapes. Incised into the middle is the company's logo, a bird’s nest complete with feathered occupants. The interplay between making new work, commissions and exhibitions continued to expand their horizons, and in 2001 they made a move to Paris, where they set up a studio in the archway of an old railway viaduct, in the 12th arrondissement.
In 2008, however, came the financial crisis, which had a devastating effect on sales. It was a difficult time but Baldwin & Guggisberg turned it to their advantage.
They hunkered down and started to experiment with ideas for a new series, their Boats; in the boat they discovered a vehicle that would allow them to think as allusive artists and speak across time-frames and cultures, all the while exploiting their love of colour.
They now feel that boats are their most autobiographical and evocative works to date. They are both sailors – Philip even considered a career as a boat-builder at one point – and travel is in their DNA. Their boats evoke images of a forgotten wreck, of ancient barques bearing funerary urns or merchant ships plying their trade; of skiffs carrying souls to the Underworld or, more universally, simply the journey of life. Today the boat has taken on a more urgent meaning – a reference to the ongoing migrant crisis and displacement of peoples through war.
In 2015, tiring of the demands of city living, Monica and Philip moved their studio once again, this time to Hares Green Farm in rural mid Wales. Their migration coincided with that of a steady stream of refugees seeking sanctuary in Europe, reinforcing the relevance of their Boat series. A year later, they showed a large-scale boat at St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh as part of a solo exhibition, which in turn provoked interest from Canterbury Cathedral for a significantly larger project, the evocatively titled Under an Equal Sky.
This was Baldwin & Guggisberg's watershed moment. The Dean of Canterbury, Robert Willis, was keen to find a way to commemorate the one hundred years since the 1918 Armistice; remembrance had to play its part, as did the themes of journeying and migration, which were part of the Cathedral's focus for 2018. How to bring the two together? Monica and Philip proposed suspending a vast boat made of one hundred metre-high mould- blown glass amphorae in the Cathedral's Nave, a kind of votive offering symbolic of past and present, and of those who continue to lose their lives as a result of upheaval and war. Appropriately enough for a place of sanctuary, the word Nave is taken from the Latin navis, meaning ship. And the relevance extends to Canterbury itself – based as it is near the seaports closest to France, the city and cathedral have over the centuries played host to waves of pilgrims and refugees.
They had attempted nothing on this scale before. To it they added nine other works, which together formed a pathway around the building, adding an engaging overlay to visitors' experience of the architecture and the Cathedral's history. In the North Aisle of the Cathedral they hung a frame strung with one hundred glass forms, titled 'You, Me and the Rest of Us' – the piece central to the exhibition at Galleri Glas and the gateway between Baldwin & Guggisberg's installations for Canterbury and their body of work for Stockholm.
The work echoes the one hundred amphorae that hung in the Cathedral Nave. But where the vessels in the Nave were transparent, as if waiting to be filled, and were all the same size and shape, suggesting the equality of all human beings, these are strictly contained in a grid format, and in three distinct colours – black, matte white and gold – suggestive of the crude and inescapable inequalities that exist between peoples, between rich and poor – between you, me and the rest of us. It's a commonly held view – at least in the West – that the wealthy are wealthier today than at any time since before the outbreak of the First World War, and that can only happen when the poor get poorer: under our so-called 'equal sky' we are ever more unequal. How then do we start to move towards a world in which there is a balance between the needs of the individual and those of the community? That is the rhetorical question at the heart of this exhibition.
Hedvig Hedkvist
