Talking with Keith Gravestock in venue 1
Rochford Life: Keith, welcome back to the Rochford Art Trail. I seem to remember you caused a bit of a stir last year with your work which was displayed in the window of Rochford Furnishing, and I have seen your work in Venue 5, in Number 1,this year and now here a much bigger display of beautiful glass.
Keith: That’s right.
RL: How long have you been working with glass?
Keith: I’ve been doing the fused glass for about twenty months, since January last year, that’s all, and the copper foiled and leaded work, that’s been about the last ten years.
RL: Can you explain those two you have just described?
Keith: Well the copper foiled work is what is sometimes termed tiffany and is taking pieces of glass, cutting them into shape, wrapping them in copper foil and soldering them together, so there’s the 3-
RL: And the other sort?
Keith: The other sort is fused, so I have a kiln at home, I cut the glass up to various shapes, sizes, designs and patterns, put it in the kiln, take it up to about eight hundred degrees so that at that level it all fuses together and becomes one, or I can take it a little bit less than that so it leaves a bit of a texture. The bowls, for instance, are taken up to a full fused temperature and then they are put on a mould; they are either slumped in a mould or over a mould. To create the holes I cut the glass into strips, lay it out in a circle, leaving gaps and when it melts together it leaves the holes.
RL: How did you get into this sort of art?
Keith: I worked in security for Royal Mail and was made redundant – that was four years ago – I needed a direction and a certain amount of income, and this sort of took off. I did a bit of glass work, did a couple of craft fairs and items sold, and so I went from there, and I’m now in the Guild of Essex Craftsmen and I go off and do all their exhibitions, doing as many craft events as I can and this is my life now.
RL: What seems so amazing is the tremendous variety of work.
Keith: Well I try and make stuff that will appeal to a wide market and I try to make items that are fairly cheap as well as things that are fairly expensive. I am about to get a bigger kiln because bowls take about two days to make and I can’t get much more in my existing one so my new bigger kiln will probably take four or five at a go.
RL: Well Keith, thank you very much, for your beautiful work and for sharing with us. Please keep on coming back and bringing even more of this lovely glass work.
Some of Keith’s pieces on this page from Venue 5
Check out: www.abitofglass.co.uk
As the the Rochford Art Trail gets under way we we dropped in on Venue 1, the Pavilion of the Rochford Hotel good to pick up on one or two of the artists displaying there. The second was glass artist Keith Gravestock
