Katie-Ann Houghton, Glass Artist
KAH
BOTANY, SYDNEY
In a time-honoured tradition, passed down to her from a Murano legend via her university tutor, Katie-Ann Houghton is keeping alive the alchemy of Venetian glassblowing, one of the creative casualties of modern mass production. Fire is a constant in the life of Katie-Ann, who shifts gears between the kilns of her glassblowing business, KAH, and the kitchen in her role as manager of LP’s Quality Meats, a celebrated smokehouse and deli in Sydney’s inner-city suburb of Chippendale. Be it a tactile whisky tumbler rimmed in gold or a sleek but sturdy water bottle, her designs are a fusion of minimalist modern style and the delicate glassware that’s a hallmark of the traditional Venetian technique.
“I loved doing arts and crafts when I was growing up. My first real job I was a slip caster in a little craft ceramics store, the kind where the old ladies go and do their craft classes but I was out working in the back, making all the ceramics.
So I was really interested in ceramics and thought I was going to do that. I had a brilliant high school art teacher who went above and beyond to take me to see things, introduce me to things, put me into art competitions. And then she took me to Canberra Glassworks and I was obsessed. It was like ceramics on fire and I just felt, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. So I enrolled in it at art school and haven't done anything else since.
Venetian glassblowing is a dying art. Even in Venice, the big studios are closing their doors. One of the reasons I've always loved glass is that my grandparents had a little collection in their cabinet from their travels to Italy: small figurines and these really ornate vessels made by hand. Everything’s produced so fast now, even that high-end kind of souvenir is not really the same anymore. With the mechanisation of everything, there’s a trend away from that kind of production.
The Venetian technique is a step-driven process where you really have to know what you're doing and think it through the whole time. The aesthetic is not necessarily 100% what I'm interested in, but those techniques and processes make my work Venetian-style rather than, say, Swedish-style, which uses moulds and is what you see with something like Kosta Boda or Orrefors, which is often a lot chunkier cut crystal.
In the old days, the Venetian glassblowers on Murano weren't allowed to leave the island. And then, in the 20th century, some absconded and went to America and taught the Americans how to blow glass, Venetian style. I was mostly trained by an Australian guy called Ben Edols; I worked with him throughout university and he was my first employer after I finished. And he was trained directly by this guy called Lino Tagliapietra, who’s based in Seattle and is one of the most famous Venetian absconders.
Ben is a really typical Venetian-style glass blower and does a lot of what we call cane work, the glass with the lines through it, so I learned how to do that from him. But I didn't really want to make exhibiting art, so after that I went to a craft and design institution called Jam Factory in Adelaide. During my Associate Program there, I had an opportunity to go to a summer school in America, and when I was doing that I met [LA-based glass artist] Joe Cariati, who was teaching the class. When I finished my studies, I got a grant to do a mentorship with him and his company. I ended up working there for three years before coming back to Sydney in 2018.
Each step I took was a really strong influence. At Jam Factory, I learned how to blow glass in a way that you can make a living from it. And then Joe has quite a large business in handmade design, so while I was there – because I wanted to learn more about his business model and his work ethos as well as the glassblowing – we did a big installation in Selfridges and then trade shows throughout the US and Europe.
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the food and drink industry influences my desire to make things of use as well as things that people cherish”
Katie-Ann Houghton
My work is kind of functional vessel-based, and the food and drink industry influences my desire to make things of use as well as things that people cherish. We use some of my decanters in the restaurant that I work in. It's so much nicer using something that's been made with the hands rather than stock standard like a Riedel decanter. Practically, you can't use a lot of handmade goods in a restaurant setting just because it's not financially viable, but I don’t like to use things that are made by machines.
In my studio, some of the machines were built from scratch. My studio mate’s husband is a full-scale genius, and he built us this grinding machine – because it has to spin really fast – out of the internals of a washing machine, which just blew my mind. All of the glass is cut with diamonds, and I have to purchase diamond wheels from Germany or the Czech Republic, which is famous for cut-glass crystal. Glassblowing tools themselves haven't actually changed since the 14th century. Everything we use, with the exception of gas mains and electricity, hasn't changed. It's very wild. You can get your hands on some really cool old stuff, but then there's some really sweet new stuff coming out with crazy sharp metals, too, which is fun.
There's a hot studio, which we call the hot shop. And then there's the area where we grind glass and do everything once it’s come out of the anealer and that’s called the cold shop. My Sydney studio is a cold shop and a sculpture-building studio. To go and blow glass in the hot shop, I'll usually go to Canberra from Sydney, which is a three-hour drive. I pop into the studio where the furnace is on 24/7. An hour and a half before you start, you heat it up, to bring it up to about 1500C. While you're waiting, it's coffee time, and after that it’s all systems go; you kind of just work solidly from four to eight hours, depending. You take a lunch break if it’s more than four hours, but otherwise we’ll work through.
Normally, if I'm making some larger scale work or something I want to be a little more considered about, I'll just use one assistant. So at the glassblowing bench, somebody else is blowing into the pot, and you're shaping it with your tools and your hands. If I'm making production work that’s established already and I know exactly how to make it, I’ll use two to four assistants, depending on the speed we want to work at.
Strong teamwork is really important in glassblowing. A lot of things fall on the floor and break when you're starting, but usually now I don’t have too many breakages, especially when we’re in a real rhythm and working quite quickly. I like to work with the same teams all the time because I'll know exactly what someone's handing me: the weight, the heat and all of that business. I work with two particular guys often; one of them brings really round, even bubbles and the other one brings bubbles that have got more weight at the bottom. Both are fine, but I just need to slightly adjust what I'm doing based on what I receive.
Basically, shaping and building each piece is a little science of heating up the areas that you want to move and cooling down the ones that you don't want to move, and then just adding into that mix centrifugal force and gravity. I can get really nerdy and talk for a long time about the thermal physics of the whole thing, but I don’t think anyone finds it as interesting as I do.
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shaping and building each piece is a little science of heating and cooling, then adding into that mix centrifugal force and gravity
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Colour is made by adding metal and mineral oxides to clear glass. So, in itself it’s own science. There are lots of different ways to apply colour, but [the process I use] is called overlay. When I set up a studio, I'll chop all the bits of colour up to the size I need to make the colour density of each piece, then I put that in a separate kiln and bring it up to 580-600C, depending on the colour. I'll blow a clear bubble, and then, holding the glassblowing pipe completely upright, resting the mouthpiece on my foot, I spin the pipe and use a tool to push the colour around while it’s still really hot. You’ve got to wrap it from the tip of the bubble all the way around to the back. It’s a little crass but it’s like putting on a condom, essentially.
I’ve taken a real turn in the last six months where I'm quite into opaque colours, but usually I like things that are just bright and simple. Blue, grey and aubergine features a lot in my work – they’re colours I’m attracted to but also in terms of marketability; they suit a lot of environments. But my favourite actual colour of glass is clear – that really beautiful clear glass is phenomenal. I guess it might be a slightly purist thing, where I feel like if you can make something look awesome when it's clear, then you’ve made it really sweet, whereas the colour can kind of take away from the form sometimes.
I’m generally not using my creative brain while I'm blowing glass. That all comes beforehand, when I’m designing things, or after, when I look at something and think, oh no that's not right. For example, with the carafe that I make that has the squeezed-in sides: for about two years I made that as straight-sided. And then I was looking at it and I was like, this just doesn't have enough personality – what can I do to this to show my hand in it? Also, I have really small hands. So I was thinking, do I need to put a handle on it, but I don't really like glass handles so that’s not happening... But now it’s something that I can physically pick up with my tiny hands, even if it's full, because it's got those grooves to hold it with.
The whisky glasses I make are very much a case of form and function. The gold I put on them is actually ceramic lustre, and I have to play a little game of risk where I take the glass harder than it wants to go before it starts moving in the kiln. And so they all have this slightest little warp to them. But there's something about the way that they warp that fits perfectly in the nook of your hand, so it’s just made me love them more – they're made for the palm.
My favourite series of work that I've made, both technically and aesthetically, is a leopard-print light. It’s a contemporary use of a very old Italian technique called murrine, where you build the pattern in a similar way that they make those rock candies with the patterns in them. It takes so long but is so rewarding when you get it right.
Talking about the Venetian style of making glass, that artisanal heritage is something that's super important to me. One of my philosophies is that if you’re going to do something like this, you really need to ring true to the history. And with respect to the generations of people that have come before and developed these techniques.”
For more, visit katieannhoughton.com
Photography: KAH
@kah_glass