Market Micro: Snow Globes

Karen D. Singh -- Interior Design, 11/1/2008 12:00:00 AM

Having earned a degree from the Edinburgh College of Art in 2003, glass artist Heather Gillespie moved to remote Kamenicky Senov in the Czech Republic to study the 16th-century art of copper-wheel engraving, an archaic process no longer taught in the U.K. Four years later, she used her skills to fashion glass lighting, bowls, and vases inspired by Iceland's volcanic landscape and the country's traditional Lopapeysur pattern, popular on knitted sweaters. The designs, forged in shades of arctic white, gray, and snowy silver, also reference glacial layer formations. Gillespie draws the patterns directly on the glass, then coats the renderings with glue to keep them from disappearing once the engraving process has started. Lighting is made of common soda lime glass, used for jars and drinking glasses; vessels are made of leaded crystal. Each unique lamp takes approximately four days to create, and the line took eight months to design. 44-78-531-779-37; gillespieglass.co.uk. circle 410