25 Years of New Glass Review
Tina Oldknow

247 pages, 200 color illustrations.
Published 2005 by The Corning Museum of Glass
ISBN: 0 87290 160 2

This book presents 200 photographs of contemporary glass that originally appeared in New Glass Review between 1980 and 2004. It is not, the author writes, "about what or who is best in glass. It is about what I think has been significant in the field and who I think has made an important contribution to it, as reflected in the pages of New Glass Review."

Each issue of the Review, an annual publication of The Corning Museum of Glass, documents the works of 100 artists, which are selected by a jury from about 900 artist submissions. This jury, unlike many art juries, does not operate on the basis of consensus. The jurors do not assign numbers to objects that are then tallied, with the highest-scoring pieces declared to be the "winners." Even if only one juror votes for an object, it can be among the chosen 100.

Tina Oldknow, the Museum's curator of modern glass and a member of the New Glass Review jury yearly since 2001, has re-examined the 2,500 works published during the Review's first quarter-century. The works she presents here emphasize "the excellence of the idea or function, as well as the high quality of the aesthetic or technique."

"I chose some works for their historical value, but they had to be objects that have aged well, remaining fresh," she writes. "I found that a lot of the earlier pieces seemed too familiar, so many more recent than historical works are included in this overview. I picked objects that I felt strongly about, well-conceived and well-executed pieces that I would want to add to Corning's collection for their content, originality, charisma, or ambition."

The book is organized into five sections devoted to vessels, sculpture, flat/painted glass, installations/architectural glass, and design. Each section, which is arranged alphabetically by artist, is introduced with an essay that briefly discusses the works. The photographs in the book are the same photographs that appeared in the original issues of the Review, and the descriptions of the objects are the original descriptions provided by the artists. The names of the jurors who initially selected the works are listed in the entries.

"Some of my classifications will be questioned, I am sure," Ms. Oldknow says. "So much in contemporary glass resists definition, and works want to cross boundaries. This is characteristic of craft-associated media in general. However, in order to understand how the field has changed and is changing, our definitions of the activities that we collectively identify as 'studio glass' need to increase."

The book includes a foreword by Thomas S. Buechner, the Corning Museum's first director and the founder of New Glass Review. There is also an alphabetical listing of the artists and the countries they represent.