Membrana vases by Jacqueline Terpins
When mixing paint colors, there is always a moment in which the two original colors are swirled and marbled together, each color still distinctly itself, before the colors combine to form a new shade. Perhaps we think this liminal moment in which the colors are comingled but not fused is more beautiful than the end product. Think of gorgeous marbled paper, for instance. With some agitation, the marbled colors could blend to form a uniform shade. Yet preserved in their transitional moment, a beautiful marbled pattern emerges, instead.
Brazilian designer ’s Membrana vase collection formalizes this idea of liminality. When viewing a Membrana vase, we feel that if we look long enough we might witness the glassware shape-shift into another form entirely. Rather, we feel as if we have caught the glassware in this process of metamorphosis. Like all of Terpins’s luminous glassware, the Membrana vase collection utilizes the artist’s medium to capture and solidify the fluid and ephemeral forms that develop at high temperatures during the glassblowing process. The vases call to mind the elements, both for their colors—one vase is in cool shades of blues and greens, another is in warm shades of reds and oranges, and a third is pure and transparent, absent of any color—and their organic and aqueous shapes.
For the past twenty years, Jacqueline Terpins has blown glass in São Paulo, where she founded the Studio Jacqueline Terpins in 2001. Terpins studied glassblowing techniques at Penland School of Art and Craft and Pilchulk Glass School (USA), as well as drawing at the Byam Shaw School of Painting and Drawing (England). Terpins states of her glassblowing process, “Whilst handling this glowing mass, I am in direct contact with nature and strength. An object containing the finished movement and lightness of liquid serves as a memory trace, and a high temperature heat representation. At the time of creation, I let the material speak. Their own movements indicate possible paths and enable the development of new ideas. The less material is diverted from its natural course, the fluidity, the closer the object is to its unique expression” (translated from Portuguese). In addition to glassware, Terpins also creates cutlery and objects in silver or stainless steel, and furniture in wood and Corian.
