Title:
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'Inside painting', as used for Chinese snuff bottles, suggested as a new model for contemporary glass art
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This research has been an art-based practice-led project focused on Chinese
'inside painting' in glass art. It has attempted to create a 'new model' for
Chinese traditional inside painting through the creation of contemporary glass
artworks. This is timely because Chinese academic glass teaching is emerging
in universities, and cast glass techniques dominate the curriculum. The
research offers an example of how traditional methods might be revitalized by
one artist to extend the options for Chinese University glass teaching. Potential
recipients are glass artists and students as well as curators and collectors.
This research mainly used studio-based art practices, inspired by traditional
inside painting of Chinese snuff bottles, traditional Chinese painting and
calligraphy, influenced by Taoism, together with Western glass painting,
printing and calligraphy in order to reduce some of the existing limitations of
traditional methods.
The methods of glass making for this research covered blowing, casting, flame
work, fusing, slumping, incorporating 'outside' painting combined with 'inside'
painting, and printing combined with inside painting.
Traditional inside painting techniques have developed over more than 200
years into a popular form of Chinese folk art, often based on glass snuff bottles
with painted decoration on the inside. The craftsmen who make these pieces
usually pay more attention to inside painting skills and overlook their own
artistic expression. The designs used tend to be repetitive and copies of
existing designs from other media such as ink painting or photographs. In this
research, a body of inside painted glass works was produced to show how the
glass form and painted content were combined. This work also helped to
establish possible ways to reduce the limitations of traditional inside painting of
Chinese snuff bottles.
Contextual aspects were supported by study visits to key collections and
conferences, and interviews with other makers and collectors. It is hoped that
this research will promote the development of traditional inside painting and
lead to inside glass painting developing as a strand of the contemporary
Chinese glass arts.
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