Gathering: The Power of Creative Connection

“Gathering” can mean “collecting” or “pulling together,” but in the world of glass blowing, it is a term for “collecting a mass of molten glass on the end of a blowpipe.”

In 2024, the Toyama Glass Studio, established in 1994, celebrated its thirtieth anniversary. This studio, in Toyama: City of Glass Art, was founded to train glass artists, support their becoming independent, popularize glass art, and promote the craft of glassmaking as an industry. During its long history, the Toyama Glass Studio has engaged in many projects, including programs to promote glass culture through hands-on glassmaking experiences, lectures about its production, branding Toyama Glass through the studio’s developing original colors of glass, and collaborations with artists in other fields and with other industries. Making connections and growing: that parallels working with glass on the tip of a blowpipe, taking form by winding together various colors of glass. Both gathers are filled with hot energy.

Thus far, over a hundred artists have been associated with the studio. Their young talents, bursting with creativity, have communicated the fascination of Toyama Glass to the world. As staff members, those artists work hard, day by day, honing their skills. After leaving the studio, most are active as glass artists, in Japan or abroad. Mastering traditional glass techniques, they raise their own work to new heights. Pioneering new techniques, they strive for distinctive creative styles. Focussing on the art of their craft, they concentrate on creating vessels. The work they create as individual artists is truly rich and full of variety.

This exhibition is a gathering of the works of artists associated with the studio over the years, gathered together in one setting. Tracing the history of the studio and its efforts to open up the potential of Toyama Glass and expand the scope of glass culture in Japan and abroad, the exhibition also considers the studio’s future, a future to look forward to.

Toyama Glass Art Museum
bijutsukan-01@city.toyama.lg.jp