Jeremy Langford (sculptor)

Last updated

Jeremy Langford.jpg

Jeremy Langford (born London, England, 1956) is a British/Israeli glass sculptor and designer. His artistic specialties are monumental stacked glass sculpture, architectural glass, and stained glass. He has been commissioned worldwide to create glass art for governments, private houses, corporations, hotels, and religious organisations. Major works include monumental glass installations at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the ancient tomb of the Matriarch Rachel in Bethlehem, three massive sculptures for the Trump Towers at Sunny Isles Beach, Florida, and the new Waldorf Astoria hotel in Jerusalem. His studio is in Israel.

Contents

Biography

Jeremy Langford was born in London, England in 1956, moving later to Melbourne, Australia at the age of 13. His first experiences in experimenting with glasswork followed two years later, melting bottles in an old ceramic kiln, using the raw material to make his first stained glass works. He moved back to the U.K. at 18. He became a glass artist apprentice acquiring the glassmaking techniques and skill sets he would use as a foundation in his later artistic works.

Langford's original surname was Lelyveld, his family being natives of the Netherlands. Langford's father, Barry Langford (b. London, England, 1926) was the BBC producer and director who created the first pop-music shows for the BBC network and directed many, including the Tom Jones Show.

Jeremy married Yael Langford (née Itach), an Israeli scientist who specialized in quantum chemistry and the relationship between brainwaves and consciousness. They had five children together. The couple was involved together in a beta project involving the connection between art, brainwaves, and consciousness. Yael Langford died on 15 September 2009.

Langford has studied Ashlagian Kabbalah and Jewish spiritual teachings since 1977. He became a full-time student of Rabbi Baruch Ashlag in 1984 until his teacher's death on 13 September 1991. He founded and heads the Ashlag Heritage Foundation in Israel and is working on a website of Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag's teachings that features a full search engine of Ashlagian Kabbalisitc teachings. In 1995 he founded Galim: The Human Potential Institute with his wife.

Art career

Establishing himself with a studio in London in the mid-1970s, his time was divided between the U.K. and Israel while he further developed his glass art skills. During this time he began experimenting with stacked sculptural glass.

Langford's projects include three monumental sculptures in the Trump International Towers at Sunny Isles Beach, Florida and a sculpture in the Miami Four Seasons Hotel. His glasswork can also be seen at a number of public buildings in New York, California.. Other artistic works have been installed in several important synagogues.

Holocaust Memorial Glass Sculpture At The Western Wall in Jerusalem Holocaust Memorial Glass Sculptor Jeremy Langford.jpg
Holocaust Memorial Glass Sculpture At The Western Wall in Jerusalem

Among the best-known of Jeremy Langford's projects is the Chain of Generations Center, [1] [ failed verification ] a heritage center at Jerusalem's Western Wall created in 2006. Extending down into the catacombs at the edge of the Western Wall, the site has a large collection of glass sculptures that document the history of the Jewish people from biblical times to the present day. The project was partly funded by Mortimer Zuckerman, US media magnate. The sculptural glass artwork has carved and etched layers of plate glass, which required nearly 150 tons of glass to create. The project received the Thea Award from the Themed Entertainment Association (The Disney Corporation) as the “Outstanding Heritage Center worldwide 2008”.

Recently, Langford has focused on making studio glass, creating sculptures for private collectors and art museums. He also creates glass art and stained glass for synagogues and private homes.

Selected works

• The Supreme Court Building, Jerusalem

• The City of David, Jerusalem

• Residence of the President of Israel, Jerusalem

• The Western Wall Tunnels, Old City, Jerusalem

• The Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Jerusalem

• The Tomb of the biblical Matriarch Rachel, Bethlehem

• The Tomb of King David, Jerusalem

• The Tomb of the prophet Samuel, Jerusalem

• The Supreme Court Building, Jerusalem

• Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

• Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv

• British Museum, London

• Hilton Hotel, Mayfair, London

• Trump International Towers, Sunny Isles Beach, Florida

• Four Seasons Hotel, Miami

Publications

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Basilica of Saint-Denis</span> Basilica in Saint-Denis, France

The Basilica of Saint-Denis is a large former medieval abbey church and present cathedral in the commune of Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris. The building is of singular importance historically and architecturally as its choir, completed in 1144, is widely considered the first structure to employ all of the elements of Gothic architecture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sainte-Chapelle</span> French royal chapel in Paris, France

The Sainte-Chapelle is a royal chapel in the Gothic style, within the medieval Palais de la Cité, the residence of the Kings of France until the 14th century, on the Île de la Cité in the River Seine in Paris, France.

<i>The Thinker</i> Sculpture by Auguste Rodin

The Thinker, by Auguste Rodin, is a bronze sculpture situated atop a stone pedestal depicting a nude male figure of heroic size sitting on a rock. He is seen leaning over, his right elbow placed on his left thigh, holding the weight of his chin on the back of his right hand. The pose is one of deep thought and contemplation, and the statue is often used as an image to represent philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gothic art</span> Style of medieval art

Gothic art was a style of medieval art that developed in Northern France out of Romanesque art in the 12th century AD, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It spread to all of Western Europe, and much of Northern, Southern and Central Europe, never quite effacing more classical styles in Italy. In the late 14th century, the sophisticated court style of International Gothic developed, which continued to evolve until the late 15th century. In many areas, especially Germany, Late Gothic art continued well into the 16th century, before being subsumed into Renaissance art. Primary media in the Gothic period included sculpture, panel painting, stained glass, fresco and illuminated manuscripts. The easily recognizable shifts in architecture from Romanesque to Gothic, and Gothic to Renaissance styles, are typically used to define the periods in art in all media, although in many ways figurative art developed at a different pace.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yehuda Ashlag</span> Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and Kabbalist

Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag (1885–1954) or Yehuda Leib Ha-Levi Ashlag, also known as the Baal Ha-Sulam in reference to his magnum opus, was an Orthodox rabbi, kabbalist and anarchist born in Łuków, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, to a family of scholars connected to the Hasidic courts of Porisov and Belz. Rabbi Ashlag lived in the Holy Land from 1922 until his death in 1954. In addition to his Sulam commentary on the Zohar, his other primary work, Talmud Eser Sefirot is regarded as the central textbook for students of Kabbalah. Ashlag systematically interpreted the wisdom and promoted its wide dissemination. In line with his directives, many contemporary adherents of Ashlag's teachings strive to spread Kabbalah to the masses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Came glasswork</span> Glass joined with came strips or foil

Came glasswork is the process of joining cut pieces of art glass through the use of came strips or foil into picturesque designs in a framework of soldered metal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western Wall Tunnel</span> Tunnel in Jerusalem

The Western Wall Tunnel is a tunnel exposing the Western Wall slightly north from where the traditional, open-air prayer site ends and up to the Wall's northern end. Most of the tunnel is in continuation of the open-air Western Wall and is located under buildings of the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. While the open-air portion of the Western Wall is approximately 60 metres (200 ft) long, the majority of its original length of 488 metres (1,601 ft) is hidden underground. The tunnel allows access to the remainder of the Wall in a northerly direction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joshua Neustein</span> Israeli artist

Joshua Neustein is a contemporary visual artist who lives and works in New York City. He is known for his Conceptual Art, environmental installations, Land Art, Postminimalist torn paper works, epistemic abstraction, deconstructed canvas works, and large-scale map paintings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Gerstein (Israeli artist)</span> Israeli painter and sculptor (born 1944)


David (Dudu) Gerstein is an Israeli painter, sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker. He began as a figurative painter and was recipient of the Israel Museum Prize for illustration. At the end of the 1970s, he wished to expand the limits of two-dimensional painting, into painting in three dimensions. He began cutting out the main subjects of each painting and, to cancel the background, creating unique and iconic cutout images, free-standing in space, without the standard and traditional square frame.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Naftali Bezem</span> Israeli painter, muralist and sculptor (1924-2018)

Naftali Wahba Bezem was an Israeli painter, muralist and sculptor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fondation Maeght</span> Modern art museum in Saint-Paul de Vence, France

The Maeght Foundation or Fondation Maeght is a museum of modern art on the Colline des Gardettes, a hill overlooking Saint-Paul de Vence in the southeast of France about 25 km (16 mi) from Nice. It was established by Marguerite and Aimé Maeght in 1964 and houses paintings, sculptures, collages, ceramics and all forms of modern art.

Willet Hauser Architectural Glass, Inc is a North American stained glass firm located in Winona, Minnesota, that specializes in the design, fabrication, preservation and restoration of leaded stained glass and faceted glass windows.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Holyland Model of Jerusalem</span> Scale model reconstruction of ancient Jerusalem

The Holyland Model of Jerusalem, also known as Model of Jerusalem at the end of the Second Temple period is a 1:50 scale model of the city of Jerusalem in the late Second Temple period. The model, designed by Michael Avi-Yonah, was moved from its original location at the Holyland Hotel in Bayit VeGan, Jerusalem, to a new site at the Israel Museum in June 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glass art</span> Art, substantially or wholly made of glass

Glass art refers to individual works of art that are substantially or wholly made of glass. It ranges in size from monumental works and installation pieces to wall hangings and windows, to works of art made in studios and factories, including glass jewelry and tableware.

David Breuer-Weil is an artist from London whose work is exhibited worldwide. He works in different media including large canvases and monumental bronze sculptures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ilan Averbuch</span> Israeli-born New York sculptor

Ilan Averbuch is a sculptor living and working in Long Island City, New York. Averbuch creates large-scale monumental artworks and installations for gallery and museum exhibitions in addition to outdoor public spaces.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jerusalem Municipality</span> Israeli municipality of Jerusalem

The Jerusalem Municipality , the seat of the Israeli municipal administration, consists of a number of buildings located on Jaffa Road in the city of Jerusalem.

Jean-Jacques Duval was a French-born American artist who pioneered abstract art and the use of faceted glass in stained glass design in the 1960s. In 2005 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Stained Glass Association of America. Best known for his window designs in Germany, Israel, Japan, the West Indies, and the United States, his paintings and sculptures have also been exhibited throughout North America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nehemia Azaz</span> Israeli sculptor

Nehemia Azaz, also Nehemiah, Henri or N H Azaz, was an Israeli sculptor, ceramicist and architectural artist, who spent half of his working life in the UK. Best known in Israel as founder of the Department of Artistic Ceramics at the Harsa factory in Beersheba, Azaz made his studio base in Oxfordshire, England from the late 1960s onwards, working in stained glass, wood, concrete, bronze, brass, copper and aluminium.

Israel Hadany is an Israeli environment artist, sculptor and jewelry designer, internationally acknowledged. He is involved with poetry writing as well.

References

  1. "Western Wall Jerusalem - The Chain of Generations". Western Wall Heritage Foundation. Retrieved 8 June 2021.