Opal Green

Object NameSculptural Vessel

Maker Tom Patti (American, b. 1943)

Made FromLaminated sheet glass

Date1976

TechniqueLaminated sheet glass, blown, cut, ground,polished, opalescent

SizeH: 15.1 cm, D(max): 17.4 cm

Accession Number76.4.30

Curatorial Area(s)

Postwar and Contemporary

Exhibitions

The Corning Collection

Interpretive Notes

Web Text

A widely respected artist and studio glass pioneer, Patti has devoted much of his career to researching special glasses and hot-forming techniques. He began to work with glass during the early years of the Studio Glass movement, but he chose to explore industrial sheet glass, rather than blown glass, as the material for his art. Over the last 35 years, Patti has used glass to build and define architectonic spaces that transform surface, light, and color, fusing layers of glass with bubbles and other spatial elements into unique works. Although his sculptures are small, the strength of the forcefully compressed layers of glass makes them physically imposing.

Place Made

United States, MA, Savoy

Physical DescriptionColorless, opaque white, translucent gray, translucent pale green, and translucent to transparent whitish opalescent (possibly colorless with opalescent surface); laminated sheet glass, blown, cut, ground and polished. Sculpture: spheroid, but with form modified to make square shoulder and somewhat angular, ribbed junction of sections of wall below each angle. Rim tapers to flat top which is ground but not polished; stepped shoulder; wall descends with convex profile and then curves in toward bottom; base plain with low kick. Laminated glass has five more or less horizontal layers of unequal thickness: (from top to bottom) colorless (thin), white, gray (thin), pale green (thicker), and opalescent (very thick: more than half total height). Signature engraved on underside of base: "Patti 76" (name cursive).
Provenance

Provenance Remark

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