How do I display my glass?

Hi.

I found your site and looked at a few pieces and thought they might go well with our house, which is vaguely modern. But my concern is with displaying them - I'd want to show them off properly but don't have a good sense of how to do this. Any suggestions?

Regards,

Chas

Thanks for your query Chas.  This is an issue I should have discussed on our website before this. 

Photo 1.  Much of the beauty of glass is a result of light shining through it, being refracted, or being reflected.  So the way to make glass look good is in the lighting.   Because we needed to store and display lots of glass, we've used a wall of our lounge to create a very large set of backlit shelves, the 'wall of light', as shown in the first picture.  In the photo, we're only using some of the shelves to display some of our best sets of glass of the time. 

Something this large would be overkill for most family homes, but we understand some of our customers have created something similar on a smaller scale.  An alcove in which you can fit fluorescent lights to the wall is ideal.  You then have a set of shelves made with perspex backing so the light penetrates.  Because our wall of light was so big, we used a single sheet of vinyl rather than multiple sheets of perspex. 

Fluorescent tubes come in various shades of white.  We used the whitest white.  In this photo it looks a little more blue than it does in real life. 

Our shelves are movable but of course this is not essential.  The fact that they are moveable allows us to create interesting patterns and displays, as I've done here, but it's probably safer to have them fixed.

Photo 2. As photo 1 shows, much of the glass that we sell - particularly coloured glass cased in clear glass, sommerso glass, and cut crystal - looks good backlit.  The second picture, Large Murano 'wingnut' vase, attributed to Seguso Vetri d'Arte is an example of a sommerso piece.  It's photographed on our "wall of light".  Of course, unless you hide it in a dark corner, you're always going to be able to see through it, so this sort of lighting is not essential, but we're looking here at what would be ideal.  Clear, colourless glass also generally looks good backlit.   We also display these sorts of pieces on shelves in our French doors, lit largely by light from the nearest windows during the day

Photo 3.  However, we also have an alcove set up (an old chimney) with softer white fluorescent tubes (a slightly yellower shade and fewer tubes) behind perspex.  This sometimes gives a more dramatic look to glass - see for example the third photo showing a Signed set of Finnish Pertti Santalahti bowls.

Photo 4.  Another good option for some pieces is to sit the glass on perspex with light underneath.  Photo 4 shows a Wirkkala bowl for Humppila photographed in this way.  Obviously, this is good for transparent or translucent bowls, but not so good for vases or other taller pieces.  This photo also shows another important point (obvious when you think about it); many bowls are designed to be looked down on.  The inside is the part the designer wanted to show off.   This means they need to be displayed low enough to look down on them. 

Some examples of bowls which don't need to be backlit or underlit are Signed Sigurd Persson 1980s Kosta bowl and Signed 1961 orange and black Flygsfors Coquille bowl.  We sit bowls like this on a piece of furniture at the bottom of our stairs so that you can see them as you come down.

Photo 5 shows a 1940s Flower and leaf vintage MURANO art glass 3-piece smoking set, probably by the firm of Barovier & Toso.   Anything with gold, silver, or copper in them, as many of the vintage Murano pieces do have, displays best at night.  This picture tries to show what the set would look like under lights - any lights pointing onto them - at night.  In daylight, or on our wall of light, the metal won't show up.  It's also an example of the need to display some pieces on dark wood, or black shelves to give the necessary contrast. 

Photo 6 is another example of a piece, a 1980s Carlo Moretti Murano art glass vase, which benefits from contrast.  On its own on a piece of furniture in the middle of a room, it's also fine, but on a white background it doesn't look nearly as good.  Because it doesn't have any transparent glass, it doesn't need to be backlit and in fact will appear as a silhouette if you do so.

Photo 7 shows an Ann and Goran Warff object which looked magnificent in just about any light, but here is shown lit from below on a base with LED lights in it.  These lights can be bought on the 'net from http://www.collectorssecret.com/ and suit some bubbled (bullicante) pieces particularly well.  They usually look good backlit, too.

Photo 8 shows that you shouldn't overlook the option of simply putting a lamp or lamps next to the piece you want to display.  These two Murano lamps have standard tungsten bulbs and both the lamps and the copper fruit display well.

Photo 9 shows an example of a backlit piece from or Pernilla's version of our wall of light, Ingeborg Lundin 1960 crystal vase for Orrefors.  Note that a dark shelf helps add definition and drama.

Photo 10, the last photo, shows a special case, 1960s Cenedese vaseline (uranium) glass bowl.  Vaseline glass needs a UV black light at night.  However, it may benefit from other lighting in the day, as this pieces shows.

Some final points:

For our style of glass, display cases with down lights generally don't work nearly as well as backlighting.  Mirrors in display cases also have limited appeal for me, but that's a matter of individual taste.  Art glass can be so varied that I'm sure there are pieces that would look good in such a setting. 

I think the main trap for art glass collectors (and we all fall into it from time to time) is clutter.  Less is more.

And lastly, sets give coherence to a collection, as I've said elsewhere on this site. 

Our Reference: 2699

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