Alison Kinnaird | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Background information | |
| Born | 30 April 1949 |
| Origin | Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Genres | Folk music, Celtic music |
| Occupation(s) |
|
| Labels | Temple Records |
| Website | www |
Alison Kinnaird MBE, MA, FGE [1] (born 30 April 1949) [2] is a glass sculptor, Celtic musician, teacher and writer born in Edinburgh, Scotland. [3] She is one of the foremost and most original modern glass engravers in Scotland. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
Her application to art college having been rejected, [12] Kinnaird earned a MA in Celtic studies and archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, in the course of which she also studied copper wheel glass engraving with Harold Gordon in Forres, [13] [14] having met him while on a family holiday there. [12]
Kinnaird's glass engraving works are in many galleries and private collections. She has been commissioned to create pieces for the Royal Family such as an engraved goblet for the late Queen Mother, a bowl for Charles and Diana's wedding, also a blue disc for the Emperor of Japan, and the Donor Window in the Scottish Portrait Gallery. [15] She uses lead and optical crystal. The techniques used by Kinnaird include copper-wheel engraving, cutting, sandblasting, acid etching and casting. Starting in a studio in the High Street, Edinburgh, her work won early recognition and was included in an exchange between the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Salzburg Fringe. [16] Later, believing that the small physical size of works produced in traditional glass engraving confines their appreciation to a limited audience, she expanded the scale of her works by using flexible drive engraving and sandblasting, combined with the adventurous use of dichroic glass. [17] More recently she has employed bonded coloured glass as her engraving medium.
Kinnaird is also a musician, a gift that led her to discover relationships between music and glass engraving, notably through designs based on Lissajous figures. [18] [19] She started playing the harp at 14 and has been credited with starting the Scottish harp revival and the Celtic harp renaissance. [20] She plays, teaches and lectures on the small Scottish harp also known as the clàrsach. [21] She was one of the first acts signed to Temple Records during the 1970s and she has had eight albums released through the label. [22] She worked with the Scottish music group Battlefield Band on their albums Music in Trust Vol I (1987) and Music in Trust Vol II (1988).
Kinnaird has written many books about traditional music and the small Scottish harp. Her first book on the subject was published in 1990 and is a collection of 24 harp tunes that she arranged. Tree of Strings (1992), written in collaboration with Keith Sanger, documents the history of the harp in Scotland and is the first book of its kind. The Lothian Collection (1995) has 25 harp tunes from the big houses and great families from East, West and Midlothian all arranged by Kinnaird. The Small Harp Tutor (1996) is a book about learning to play the small harp, which covers the history of the instrument, maintaining the instrument, arranging tunes and gives useful finger exercises. The book is accompanied by a 60-minute CD, which guides the learner from novice to more accomplished player. Kinnaird's most recent book is The North East Collection [23] which features tunes mainly from the 18th and 19th century arranged by herself.
In 1997, Kinnaird was awarded the MBE for her contribution and long standing service to art and music. [24] In 2011 National Life Stories interviewed Kinnaird for their 'Craft Lives' archive. The interviews took place over three days and document her life from childhood to becoming a successful artist and musician. She has been recognised for her contributions to Scottish folk music and was inducted into the Scots Trad Music Awards – Hall of Fame in 2010. [25]
Alison Kinnaird was married to the musician, producer and writer Robin Morton until his death. [12] She has two children, Ellen and John.
Gwendolen Mary "Gwen" Raverat, was an English wood engraver who was a founder member of the Society of Wood Engravers. Her memoir Period Piece was published in 1952.
Christine Borland is a Scottish artist. Born in Darvel, Ayrshire, Scotland, Borland is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997 for her work From Life at Tramway, Glasgow. Borland works and lives in Kilcreggan, Argyll, as a BALTIC Professor at the BxNU Institute of Contemporary Art.
Alison Watt OBE FRSE RSA is a British painter who first came to national attention while still at college when she won the 1987 Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Engraved glass is a type of decorated glass that involves shallowly engraving the surface of a glass object, either by holding it against a rotating wheel, or manipulating a "diamond point" in the style of an engraving burin. It is a subgroup of glass art, which refers to all artistic glass, much of it made by "hot" techniques such as moulding and blowing melting glass, and with other "cold" techniques such as glass etching which uses acidic, caustic, or abrasive substances to achieve artistic effects, and cut glass, which is cut with an abrasive wheel, but more deeply than in engraved glass, where the engraving normally only cuts deeply enough into the surface to leave a mark. Usually the engraved surface is left "frosted" so a difference is visible, while in cut glass the cut surface is polished to restore transparency. Some pieces may combine two or more techniques.
Alison Mary Wilding OBE, RA is an English artist noted for her multimedia abstract sculptures. Wilding's work has been displayed in galleries internationally.
John Farleigh CBE, also known as Frederick William Charles Farleigh, was an English wood-engraver, noted for his illustrations of George Bernard Shaw's work The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, which caused controversy when released due to the religious, sexual and racial themes within the writing and John Farleigh's complementary wood engravings commissioned by Shaw for the book. He is also known for his illustrations of D. H. Lawrence's work, The Man Who Died, and for the posters he designed for London County Council Tramways and London Transport. He was also a painter, lithographer, author and art tutor.
Elizabeth Fritsch CBE is a British studio potter and ceramic artist born into a Welsh family in Whitchurch on the Shropshire border. Her innovative hand built and painted pots are often influenced by ideas from music, painting, literature, landscape and architecture.
Rosemary Kilbourn is a Canadian printmaker, illustrator and stained glass artist known for her work in the wood engraving.
Margaret Isobel Chilton (1875–1963), born at Clifton, Bristol, was a British stained glass artist and instructor.
Margaret Pilkington was a British wood-engraver who was active at the beginning of the twentieth century. She was a pupil of Noel Rooke at the Central School of Art and Design and was a member of the Society of Wood Engravers and the Red Rose Guild. She was awarded the OBE in 1956.
Florence Camm was a British stained-glass artist, painter and metalworker associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. Camm and her brothers, Walter and Robert, took over the management of the family stained-glass business after her father, T. W. Camm died in 1912. Camm was the principal designer of the firm until her death in 1960.
Veronica Maudlyn Ryan is a Montserrat-born British sculptor. She moved to London with her parents when she was an infant and now lives between New York and Bristol. In December 2022, Ryan won the Turner Prize for her 'really poetic' work.
Cathie Pilkington is a London-based British sculptor represented by Karsten Schubert London. She studied at Edinburgh College of Art and the Royal College of Art, and was elected as a Royal Academician in 2014. She became professor of sculpture at the Royal Academy Schools in 2016.
Alison Cornwall Geissler MBE, née McDonald, was one of the foremost glass engravers in Scotland during the mid-twentieth century.
Angela Palmer is a Scottish artist and former journalist. Before becoming an artist, Palmer had a career as a journalist: she was a columnist for The Daily Telegraph, Diary Editor of The Times, News Editor of The Observer, Magazine Editor of The Observer and Editor-in-chief of ELLE magazine.
Ronald Pennell is a British artist, engraver, especially in glass engraving, and sculptor.
Anne Dybka (1921–2007) was an English Australian artist and glass engraver. After training and study in painting, drawing, glass engraving and graphic arts, Dybka went on to create works which are on display in Australian public collections. Dybka's works are privately owned by Hua Guofeng, the former Chinese premier, Lord Snowdon, Sir Roden Cutler and Neville Wran.
Siobhan Healy is a Scottish artist and designer of glass art and goldsmithing. Her work is held in the collections of The Scottish Parliament Art Collection, Harvard Museum of Natural History/Herbarium, Glasmuseum Lette, Germany, The Heritage Collection, Clackmannanshire Council, UK and the Perth Museum and Art Gallery, UK.
Helen Monro Turner was a Scottish artist based in Edinburgh. She worked her whole life and pursued careers as a wood cut specialist, glass engraver, illustrator and educator. She helped open and establish the first glass engraving department at Edinburgh College of Art on 8 January 1941. The scale of her work ranged from a single glass or a tiny engraved crystal box to huge architectural commissions such as the windows on the staircase in the National Library of Scotland.
Bryant Olcher Fedden was a self-taught letter-cutter, glass engraver and sculptor who developed his craft in a workshop environment with craftspeople whom he taught and supported. He was a member of the Gloucestershire Guild of Craftsmen for more than forty years. He was a founder member of the Letter Exchange, a professional organisation promoting lettering in all its forms. Bryant Fedden has work in the Victoria and Albert Museum Collections.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |