Colourful creations (From The Northern Echo)

Colourful creations

11:50am Thursday 30th July 2009 in Search By Ruth Campbell

Stunning modern glass bowls created in the heart of the North York Moors are much sought after all over the world. Ruth Campbell speaks to the couple who create them.

STEPHEN Gillie and Kate Jones’s workshop may be tucked away in the quiet end of the remote village of Rosedale Abbey, hidden from view, but it is an easy place to find, particularly in winter. When everything else is blanketed in white, this is the only building that will not have a drop of snow. The huge puddle that surrounds it provides a clue as to what is happening inside.

This is where Stephen and Kate work in intense temperatures of up to 45C, a tropical paradise in winter, blisteringly hot on a summer’s day, to create their stunning, brightlypatterned glass bowls and vessels that are now sought after all over the world.

When the couple, who have two children, Ava, nine, and Finlay, five, moved here 15 years ago, they were struggling to establish themselves in the world of contemporary glass.

But several years of hard work and travelling all over the world to exhibit their brightly-coloured, bold, modern designs at major shows and galleries has paid off.

After the Victoria and Albert Museum commissioned them to create a piece in 2003, their popularity soared. Now, keen collectors travel from as far as the States to the pair’s studio in the heart of the North York Moors to snap up their latest designs.

Buyers come from Holland and London on day trips just to add to their collections. And pieces are regularly shipped to Australia and New Zealand.

THEIR limited edition pieces cost from £70 for small bowls, to more than £800 for large spun plates and up to £3,500 for larger pieces. Actor Hugh Grant owns a large glass sculpture. Reporter Kate Adie is another fan. The actor Brian Blessed walked into the studio recently and bought three intensely bright coloured bowls.

Stephen and Kate have even been asked to create the trophies for a celebrity golf tournament, in aid of the leukaemia charity based at Hammersmith Hospital, where stars, including James Nesbitt and Philip Glenister, will all be competing for one of their prized glass creations.

Although they are in demand for exhibitions all over the world – their work can be seen in galleries in Germany, Holland and America – the couple are particularly proud to show their latest creations locally, in a new exhibition, Glass, at the Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton-le- Hole, until October 11.

Stephen, born in Halifax, and Kate, from east London, have lived and worked in Switzerland and Denmark and have spent months at a time in the States. They could have chosen anywhere in the world as a base for their glass business. But Stephen, 42, whose father is originally from Helmsley, has always loved North Yorkshire and enjoyed many wonderful childhood holidays there.

When his parents retired to Rosedale and discovered a derelict stone blacksmiths building in the village, close to where an old 16th Century glass furnace had been excavated in the 1960s, he and his partner knew they had found the perfect place for what they wanted to do – to breathe new life into this ancient craft.

The son of an ICI worker and a midwife, Stephen was the first person in his family to go to college and his parents are thrilled at what he has achieved.

He describes where they live now as a type of Utopia: “It is a 21-mile round trip to the nearest town of Pickering. You really do feel the seasons here, sometimes all four of them in one day. Our children go to a wonderful village school with only 17 children, aged four to 11.

“We are fortunate because what we do we could do anywhere. From here, we can be in London in twoand- a-half hours, it’s just amazing.

And we are spoilt for airports.”

As well as providing the perfect place to bring up their two children, their beautiful surroundings also inspire Stephen and Kate’s art.

WHILE he creates all the shapes in hot glass, Kate, a trained painter, hand carves each piece to create the patterns and colour contrasts and is inspired by everything from the stone walls and hedgerows to the detail within a horse chestnut seed.“Small things in nature are very big when you stop to wonder at them,” she says. “North Yorkshire is just paradise.

It is beautiful and so inspirational.”

She explains the attraction of working in glass: “It’s all about light, it is so seductive, beautiful and versatile.

The work can be slow and meticulous, and so absorbing, you can get lost in the patterns. It takes me a week to finish a sculptural piece and there is no margin for error. But I like that discipline.”

The daughter of a lorry driver who grew up on council estate west of London, she was the first in her family to follow a creative path: “My parents were worried I would never get a proper job. Mum is proud of me, but still doesn’t quite get it,” she laughs.

Reassuringly for her mum, both manage to make a living out of their art: “For craftspeople, that is unusual.

Normally one of us would have to get a proper job.”