My piece of work ‘Charlotte’s Dress’ was made and selected for the 2010 British Glass Biennale, International Festival of Glass, Ruskin Glass Centre, Stourbridge. Its construction is from 39 individual pieces of fused glass mounted on a steel cage dress frame.
The conception for the piece is based on the mythical narrative entwined with real the story of Charlotte Brontë’s wedding dress which was alleged to have been symbolically destroyed by her husband after her premature death. The 39 pieces of glass mounted onto the dress frame mark each year of her short but significant life and the steel cage dress frame relates to the absence and presence of the female form.
My inspiration for the piece and visual research took me to the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire, as part of my obsession with the narrative of clothing embedded within my family history. The alchemy of glass and enamel has been a new and fascinating direction and I am motivated to continue working within this genre of materials. I am fascinated with idea of the ‘museum’ and enclose precious, fragile objects in glass as a vignette from Victorian history. I am attracted to the way in which materiality can determine and bring meaning to an artwork and glass and print have allowed this individual form of expression to emerge.
I was delighted when the series of work was then presented as a solo exhibition at The Brontë Parsonage Museum in the winter of 2010-11
