Eric Markow & Thom Norris create beautiful sculptural pieces both large and small from an unusual process of weaving glass. 

Lifelike models of marine life by German glass artists Leopold Blaschka (1822– 1895) and his son Rudolf Blaschka (1857–1939).

Farlow Scientific Glassblowing, Inc. - Where art meets science

Glass insects available from The Evolution Store

Some pieces from artist Rik Allen’s wonderful blown glass Spacecraft Series 

From his artist statement:

Existence can be a myopic affair, focused on the immediate and the practical. We live our lives unaware of the true ways of the world. What lies beneath the surface of everyday? What collection of intricate quantum clockwork winds the mainspring of the universe? Those few that do gain access to those secrets – figures such as Nicola Tesla, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein – are isolated spelunkers into a vast hidden world, able with a single discovery, invention, or mode of thought, to pull back the veil of the visible and reveal in wondrous awe the true nature of Everything.

Rik Allen’s current body of work mines that rich vein between the outward mysteries of creation and the inward journeys of the human imagination. What began several years ago as an exploration of the iconic rocketship in its purest form has evolved into a contemplation of the role of individuals in our finite world, all in relation to the infinite complexity and vastness of the cosmos. We are each explorers on a journey through existence and Allen’s sculptures evoke this introspection and conveyance – spacecraft captained by lonely cartographers mapping the inky black seas between us all, organic vessel-creatures harbouring spores of complex knowledge bound for undiscovered mental landscapes, or sentient mechanical emissaries propagating our viral truths through the fabric of being.

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When big windows aren’t enough, call Italian design duo Santambrogio ( Carlo Santambrogio & Ennio Arosic). They have designed two homes made entirely from blue hued glass for clients with amazing views and (just guessing) no nosey neighbors.

Check out the Trilobite Glassworks Etsy store for all of your science stained glass needs.

Chihuly Garden and Glass is an exhibition that opened at the Seattle Center on May 21st that provides a look at the inspiration and influences that inform the career of glass artist Dale Chihuly.

Glass Beach is a protected beach, but not for its natural beauty. Located just outside of Fort Bragg, California it became an illegal dumping ground for residents in the late nineteenth century who lacked any kind of refuse pickup. It wasn’t until 1967 that the illegal dump was finally closed by city leaders and the local water board. The beach was cleaned of large refuse, but small pieces of glass and plastic that had been worn down by the elements remain, giving the beach its name and its unusual beauty.

Japanese artist Mika Aoki uses the ethereal quality of glass to get us to look differently at subjects like viruses, reproduction and the origins of life.

Andy Paiko’s glass vessels.

Paiko on his work:

The most commonly held image of a glassblower is of a somewhat romanticized craftsman surrounded by flaming furnaces, making vases and bowls and drinking vessels, water jugs and little decorative horses for countertop and mantle. Though this is for the most part accurate, I consider my goal as an artist to examine the role of glass in relation to its function. Must a vessel be used in order to be functional? Does a functionless sculpture have a real purpose outside of aesthetic contemplation? If so, does its creator have to take responsibility for making something that is otherwise useless?

These questions have led me away from abstraction towards a symbolic way of dealing with the form/function relationship. Each piece could be metaphorical; it could comment on the difficulty of decisionmaking in everyday life, the relationship of society with nature or language, or the way the mind grasps experience through dreams. But further, I want to make things that try to both communicate AND imitate purpose.

Endlessly Repeating Twentieth Century Modernism by Josiah McElheny 

About the piece:

Deploying the most sophisticated and virtuoso glass-working techniques combined with a conceptual rigor, McElheny creates sculptures and installations that explore crucial moments in the development of modernity, its visual and theoretical undercurrents. Over the past four years, McElheny has produced a series of works based on a conversation between sculptor Isamu Noguchi and designer/architect Buckminster Fuller that took place in 1929 during which they discussed a world of form without shadow; totally reflective forms inhabiting a totally reflective environment that would be totally self-enclosed - the perfect utopian environment. ‘Endlessly Repeating Twentieth Century Modernism’ presents the viewer with a seemingly infinite repetition of reflections of modernist design (decanters, vases, boxes, and bottles based on designs from Scandinavia, Italy, the former Czechoslovakia, and Austria from c. 1910 -1990) that attempts to depict the capitalist notion that all objects are eternally repeatable, that everything can be remanufactured endlessly without regard to era, geography, or culture. McElheny has stated that he aims to explore how “the act of looking at a reflective object could be connected to the mental act of reflecting on an idea.”

Pill Spill by Beverly Fishman

About the piece:

Fishman’s Pill Spill, is an installation of 90 unique glass capsule forms that take their cue from mood-altering drugs. Each of the hand blown elements juxtapose multiple patterns, surfaces, and hues into an arresting spectacle. Pill Spill first took form as an installation of 120 capsules in the Toledo Museum of Art earlier this year, installed in dialogue with the architecture of the museum’s Glass Pavilion. At Galerie Richard, the capsules are reconfigured to underscore the viewer’s personal relationship to pharmaceuticals. These tantalizing yet paradoxical medications—glass capsules that won’t dissolve—remind us that medicine can be both a cure and a poison.

Kateřina Smolíková’s award-winning Skyphos collection of chandeliers is inspired by bioluminescent organisms.

About the design:

[The chandeliers are] a web of blown glass tubes and bulbs arranged in a layered volume. Thin strips of tiny LEDs are threaded throughout the body of the chandelier so that when lit, the transmitted light emanates outward as if filtered through the diaphanous membrane of a jellyfish.

Shelley James is an Artist in Residence at the Bristol Eye Hospital. Her glass work ranges from direct representations of her research into this complex organ to playful meditations on the subject.