Rare Early 2002 Signed Peter Houk MIT Glass Lab Hand Blown Pumpkin Patch Gourd

Description: Wow! Rare Early Large Size Signed Peter Houk Hand Blown Art Glass Pumpkin or Gourd from the MIT W. David Kingery Ceramics and Glass Lab’s 2nd Annual Great Glass Pumpkin Patch! This is an exceptional piece! Anything by Peter Houk is desirable and sought after, but this piece has SO much going for it! Every year the MIT Glass Lab holds their annual Great Glass Pumpkin Patch fundraiser which is where the Glass Lab gets virtually all of its yearly funding and budget! Dozens of professors, students and external glass artists alike get together to blow the glass pumpkins that are then exhibited and sold each year. Finding the ones specifically made *and signed* by the MIT Glass Lab’s director - Peter Houk - are the prized examples to find! Early on, only a few hundred pumpkins were blown each year. Today, that number is closer to 2,000. This pumpkin dates to the SECOND EVER MIT Glass Pumpkin Patch making it one of the earliest known examples, especially by Peter Houk, and making it exceedingly rare! The first was in 2001 and this example is from 2002! The pumpkin or gourd is in perfect original condition with no chips or cracks. It boasts stunning lattice-like white ribbons on a deep cobalt blue glass body. A delicate bright white glass stem tops of this beautiful glass sculpture! This is a pretty monumental size for these glass MIT pumpkins as most are miniature - around the size of an apple! This example stands at 10 1/2” tall and 6” wide. Even being hollow, it weighs over 3 pounds! Shipped with USPS Priority Mail or UPS Ground. Will be shipped in a sufficiently large box to ensure safe arrival. Here is some fun history: Peter Houk: Peter B. Houk is the the Artistic Director of the W. David Kingery Ceramics and Glass Lab at MIT. Peter Houk came to the world of glass with a background in painting and printmaking. Much of his work is concerned with the integration of imagery with the transparent and translucent qualities of glass. Throughout his career in glass, Houk has remained fixated on the unique ability of glass to convey the transient qualities of light. His painted and sandblasted work has been exhibited in many galleries and private collections and is held in the museum collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, the Tacoma Museum of Glass, and the American Museum of Glass in Millville, New Jersey. Houk has been Artistic Director of the W. David Kingery Ceramics and Glass Lab since 1997. In that period, the Glass Lab has become the most popular extracurricular activity at MIT, doubling in size and almost tripling in teaching capacity. MIT Glass Pumpkin Patch: The now well-established fall phenomenon of the glass pumpkin sale goes back to the very first Great Glass Pumpkin Patch. The idea of an overflowing glass pumpkin “patch” originated with Bobby Bowes and Mike Binnard, the founders of the Bay Area Glass Institute (BAGI). They thought up the Great Glass Pumpkin Patch, which they ran in partnership with BAGI, for the first time in 1996. Binnard, an MIT alumnus, brought the program to the MIT Glass Lab in 2001, which Peter Houk has been director of since 1997. About ten glass artists from BAGI flew out to instruct MIT students how to make the glass pumpkins, creating a fun atmosphere in the process of what Houk called “one of the ultimate team activities,” and it has since become a fundraising staple of the Glass Lab program that also functions as a team-building exercise.

Price: 600 USD

Location: Thornwood, New York

End Time: 2024-04-24T02:53:13.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD