Cast for glass

“Internationally respected doyenne” of glass casting Aucklander Ann Robinson is profiled in the Spring 2010 issue of German/English magazine Neues Glas. With no one to consult and no recipes to follow, Robinson was as naove as her Egyptian predecessors, but blessed with New Zealand ingenuity, while she blew glass in the 1980s with Gary Nash and John Croucher in their joint venture, Sunbeam Glass works, she experimented with casting in her home laundry. Initially Robinson’s castings were made with the end-of-melt glass that came out of the Sunbeam Glass furnace. The pieces from this period are described by Robinson as having “a hand-made feeling and quality of time” that she still values. She takes inspiration from the New Zealand landscape, forest and coastal waters, with hues that mimic the natural environment. In 2002, Robinson was honoured by the Designers Institute of New Zealand winning the John Britten Award for her contribution to design. Photographs included in the article were from her November 2009 exhibition ‘Celebrating the Recession’ at Milford Galleries in Dunedin.