#5910 in Turquoise; bisected bowl.

Designed in 1959, made for 1 year only. Signed

Measures 3.25in.H x 6.75in.D,

Price: $375

This bowl is a perfect example of a "gesture", a design that rests on a singular conceptual characteristic. Husted had a flair for such designs and this example is one of the clearest and most visibly demonstrative of an underlying concept. In fabricating a bowl in blown glass one begins with a ball, after breaking it from the blowpipe and holding on the pontil rod, the finisher gradually opens up the tiny hole, reheating it regularly, until the hole is a wide opening, and then finally an open bowl. It is a long process to get from ball to bowl. One can imagine that watching this process hundreds of times would lead a creative mind to try to subvert this process. And subvert it Husted did; instead of a ball he simply had a bubble blown and once it was cooled the ends were cut off and is was cut in half. And voila! A bowl, sidestepping the time honored and traditional fabrication process.

In truth it is far more difficult to make a bowl this way as cold glass is clearly more difficult to work with (by cutting and polishing) than hot glass is to shape. But the mere fact that it is more difficult does nothing more than to draw one's attention to the process of creating it; really quite ingenious.

This bowl fits neatly into a rare group of designs Husted created in 1959, each of them making extensive use (for the very first time at the Blenko Glass Company) of cold working. True, Anderson as usual had pioneered it and put the tools in place with his 964 horn vase, but as always Husted took it a step further. The 1959 cut pieces include no less than the famous 5942L U-cut cylinder vase that was chosen for inclusion in the Corning Museum of Glass' seminal exhibition "Glass 1959". All four of the 1959 cut designs were made for only one year, no doubt due in large part to considerably higher production costs marking them unprofitable.

below: full series of 1959 "cut" designs (minus the small size of the two u-cut vases)