Baldwin & Guggisberg
Philip & Monica......about themselves
We came to Italian cutting techniques because we felt we had discovered a new way to expand dramatically on what we were already doing - using sandblasting as a way to cut through layers of color to create new and originally inspired patterns and ideas. In a nutshell, this development also contained a neat autobiographical element. We learned our metier in Sweden where layering color through blown overlays (originally developed by Simon Gate for the Graal technique at Orrefors) was an "old" 20th century process. If we used that same technique and applied Italian cutting, originally pioneered by Carlo Scarpa in the 1930's and 40's, we could open up a vast and expanding panorama of possibilities. And for the last fifteen years, that is what we have been doing.
Battuto is a style, a manner, a tool of expression. It allows an otherwise shiny glass surface to loose it's shine, to gain in an earthy, pithy texture, to acquire depth, a matte finish. Combined with layers of colored glass, cut through, it yields a whole new way to "paint" on glass. But the tool is never the expression itself.
It's not the technique that speaks. The latter is more comparable to the key that opens the portal to the architect's mysterious dream house. Rather it is the expression of color and light and texture and pattern and shape which it permits us to reveal which takes on meaning. And we pray this may be apparent in our work. Certain techniques, over time, become signature elements in an artist's oeuvre. And this is true for us.
Gallery TEN had the first major exhibition of works by Baldwin Guggisberg in the UK after they moved to the UK from France. Gallery TEN was responsible for putting on the "Cathedral Collection" in St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh during the Edinburgh Festival in 2016.