The art of glass . . .

TALK about the beauty, the craftsmanship, the social history as much as you like, but there is one thing about this art that is not subjective. Professor Jack Richards’ collection of Lalique glassware is worth big bucks — over a million — so there is some luxury in getting close to them at Le Style Lalique, the exhibition that opens tomorrow at Tairawhiti Museum.
In fact, art historian Damian Skinner — who, like Richards, is based in Gisborne for part of each year — would say that their price tag is the most important part of their story.
And it is that view that he presents in the book Lalique Vases: The New Zealand Collection of Dr Jack C Richards, which he edited and that has been released to complement the Gisborne exhibition.
French designer and artist Rene Jules Lalique (1860-1945) was best known for his jewellery before the 1920s, when he was established as a designer of Art Nouveau and later Art Deco glass works from perfume bottles to chandeliers and car hood ornaments.
It was a vase, though, that caught Richards’ eye when he first spotted Lalique’s work in an Egyptian antique shop.
And it is vases that today form the collection of more than 130 pieces that occupy a specially-designed gallery at his home on the hills above Wainui Beach which, with its fitted shelving and atmospheric lighting, feels like an oversized gleaming jewellery-case.
For his part, Skinner is most interested in the part Lalique glass objects had to play “in the construction of cultural values in New Zealand”.
Who could afford to travel to countries where they were sold and, once they had got there, to pay what the seller was asking?
Rich folk, reckons Skinner, though he notes that Lalique was not hugely popular in a country where an affection for British goods was ingrained. But pieces did arrive in Aotearoa, wrapped in dressing gowns and stuffed into the suitcases of adventurous travellers who possessed what may then have appeared to be adventurous taste.
Also interesting is the psyche of the collector: what attracted Richards — whose success as an educator and linguist takes him all over the world — to a French designer who made a name for his glass objets d’art?
Recording a conversation with Richards, Skinner reports how, in 1976, the then freshly-graduated PhD was exploring antique shops in Cairo, Egypt when he was drawn to a beautiful glass vase.
It was Lalique’s 1924 fish design, Formose, rendered in frosted glass, and for a decade Richards was content to have just the one. By the 1980s, though, he began collecting in Turn to page 29
earnest until he reached the numbers he has accumulated today . . . including Formose in six different colours.
What drew Richards in (and what keeps him interested) was, he says, the beauty of the pieces.
“The Formose to me is a masterpiece of design,” he says. “I couldn’t resist buying it for more or less what my fee was for the course I was teaching at the university there!”
But while that passion is evident, a reader might wonder why Skinner chose to edit the book . . . his tone indicates that, unlike Richards, he has no particular affection for the work.
However, his background as to how the Richards’ collection was started — together with Aucklander Haru Sameshima’s gleaming photographs, and essays from Lalique scholar Carolyn Hatch and UK dealers Jan and Simon Afford – make it a useful (and very good looking) record.
Described by Dowse Art Museum director Tim Walker as “some of the best modernism that New Zealanders will see”, pieces from the Richards collection have been exhibited in Wellington and Auckland.
However, Le Style Lalique represents the first time they have had a public showing in Gisborne.
“(The vases) are beautiful objects . . . almost like huge chunks of jewellery,” Richards said. “Glass is (so) magical because it picks up the light and glows with light and colour.”
■ Le Style Lalique: Vases From the Jack C Richards Collection will be on show at Tairawhiti Museum until November 27.