The Maker
Bob Crooks | First GlassMaker in Focus
01 January - 01 February 2011
Bob Crooks is one of Britain’s most highly recognised leading glassmakers. Renown for the high quality, skilfully executed dynamic forms and surfaces he has been producing over the last twelve years. His work has been exhibited internationally, such as China, Australia and America alongside many exhibitions in the UK.
Each piece is inspired by Geometry, Architecture, the natural and man-made worlds we live in as well as the qualities and capabilities of the glass itself. Throughout the variety of the work, Bob exploits the many properties of the material through refraction and reflection; sharpness or softness, transparency or opacity. Working with its fluidity and ‘freezing’ it as the desired form is realised within the range of production work made. Bob has consciously developed work that is, because of the nature of different applications, a one-off. It is not possible to make two pieces identical.
He acquired his glassmaking skills through a year spent working as an assistant to Ronnie Wilkinson (the legendary ex-Whitefriars glassmaker) at the Glasshouse in Convent Garden during the 1980s. It was there he learnt how to handle large gathers of molten glass in a robust and forceful manner. Other delicate techniques, such as threading, he learnt from the Italian- inspired studio glassmakers as well as those in the United States.
Bob Crooks studied in West Surrey College of Art and Design (BA Hons).
