Inside the fascinating world of an artisan glassmaker
Dancing around her studio in balletic fashion, Emsie Sharp gathers globules of molten glass on the end of her blowing iron from the 1,100°C furnace, before she sits down at her bench and starts to blow. The emerging vase expands on the tip, like a balloon. She whips it round to plunge it into the ‘glory hole’ or reheating chamber to keep the glass at the right temperature for shaping, which she does by hand using wooden blocks and moulds, paddles and shears, and even old newspaper dipped into a bucket of water. Steam hisses angrily, misting up her glasses.
Her assistant of eight years, Anne Dove, anticipates her every need – at one point, she drizzles on extra molten glass like honey to make the vase’s foot. Both wear old bamboo socks over their arms as protection and they work at frenetic speed in near silence. It is captivating to watch, not least because it seems perilous at every turn.
Suddenly, the spell is broken: they have finished. The vase then goes into the annealing oven – like a kiln, set at 450°C – which slowly cools (or anneals) the glass down from 1,100°C before the glass can cool further to reach room temperature. ‘There’s quite a bit of preparation, but then it just takes shape,’ Emsie says.
It is a craft that Emsie has been perfecting for more than 30 years. Knowing she wanted a ‘hands-on kind of job’, she studied glass at what was then the West Surrey College of Art and Design. After graduating, she worked for Adam Aaronson Glass Studio and Columbia Glassworks, both then in London. In 1997, deciding she needed more training, she travelled to the Venetian island of Murano, renowned for its long tradition of glass-making, to seek work: ‘I had one contact and managed to get an unpaid job for the first three weeks.’
The job turned into a three-year apprenticeship, during which she worked 10-hour days in a team of three, starting at 5.30am and making around 100 wine glasses a day. ‘It was repetitive work as we strove for perfection,’ says Emsie.
When she moved back to the UK in 2000, she initially worked for the glass-maker William Walker, before setting up on her own in 2003. Emsie has been in her current studio – a former cowshed in Dorset, unchanged from its previous incarnation apart from the concrete floor, which she had poured – for 10 years. Pregnancy and new motherhood barely slowed her down – ‘I kept going even with a nine-month bump’ – and her baby son (now 16) slept in a bassinet on the floor of the studio soon after he was born. ‘He still loves the heat,’ she says with a smile.
The shelves display prototypes and pieces ready to ship, including tumblers with coloured rims, elaborately swirled vases, transparent pink candlesticks and ridged wine glasses (made for an American client who wanted copies of a piece in the Victoria & Albert Museum). Between them, Emsie and Anne can produce about 20 wine glasses a day. ‘I was trained to make everything look absolutely perfect, but I prefer the pieces to have a little bubble at the base of the stem, or a slightly uneven coloured rim,’ Emsie says. ‘It shows the mark of the maker, rather than it being something that has been made by a machine.’
She has just finished an order of 42 tumblers that have been shipped to St Barths for another American client, who purchased them through online crafts emporium Vigour and Skills. Other stockists include Petersham Nurseries, Messums Wiltshire, Fermoie and Montes & Clark; designer Margaret Howell has also been a client.
New in her range this year are stripy lamp bases in an array of heights and shapes. They are created using a technique that Emsie first learned in Venice and has had to brush up on. ‘It has taken a lot of time for me to master it,’ she says. ‘But I like to challenge myself.’
It is the process that she enjoys. Emsie does not keep the perfect specimens, as she prefers the orphans: ‘I don’t have a set of anything. I like the wonky ones, the unique ones. Those are the ones that stay with me.’ She says she feels a deep connection to her furnace. Its orange flame glows from the corner of the studio and emits a continual low rumble as we talk. ‘It’s like a burning dragon,’ she says fondly. ‘But a friendly one. It’s on all the time, so I feel attached to it even when I’m not here. I know it’s still rumbling on, waiting for me to come back’.
Emsie Sharp: sharpglass.co.uk | Vigour and Skills: vigourandskills.com
