We are all designers.
In our everyday life, we're hardly even conscious of it: we butter our bread, drink up our glass, rake the garden, apply lipstick and put on a particular item of clothing. Yet we're constantly making choices as to how, and using what medium or tool, we are to do such things, so that ultimately, after the techniques of buttering, drinking, raking and dressing have been applied, a distinct design or composition has materialised.
There are also people who consciously design things as their métier, profession or vocation.
Such designers think through the whys, whats, hows and wherefores of the forms they create; they consciously give the slice of bread, the butter, the butter-dish and the knife, the glass, the table, the rake and the lipstick a specific form or develop fashion images and trends by considering why a person should need to butter or rake things, dress or apply lipstick in that way.
 
The Dutch word for art, ‘kunst’, comes from the term ‘kunde’, meaning the faculty of performing given acts by means of knowledge, experience, study or observation. It's a synonym for expertise, dexterity, and skill. Glass Art is a discipline within the sphere of the Plastic Arts and, like textile art and ceramic art, it is an art which uses materials. The mentality, way of thinking and feeling, knowledge and abilities of individuals working in the field of such a Material Art must of necessity be exactly the same as those pertaining to Plastic Art and Fine Art disciplines such as Autonomous and Applied Art, Design, Crafts and Architecture, and are linked to the vision and authenticity of the artist – the artist who takes his bearings, makes his choices and imbues things with meaning by means of his finely honed capacities, applying his powers of observation, imagination, representation, analysis, association and recollection, substantiation or materialisation. Add to this the social aspects such as communication using a visual language, with all its signs, symbols and icons, myths and rites; the differentiation resulting from decoration, ornamentation and the application of distinct characteristics; conformity or confrontation within one's culture and society, and physical aspects such as one's way of moving and one's handwriting – and the material used becomes a medium with the power of representation, having its own qualities over and above the actual form and design in which the artist's work is ultimately realised.
 
Designers distinguish between their respective disciplines by giving themselves different titles: architects design landscapes and gardens, towns and buildings; interior designers furnishings, and engineers appliances and implements such as vehicles, aeroplanes, ships and boats and other machines; whilst craftsmen, artists, designers, draftsmen and industrial designers give form to objects, attributes, items of furniture and decorations. And some also create art and meaning from their designs. Over the course of history, one sees numerous examples of artists who venture beyond the limits of a specific discipline or work in a multi-disciplinary context.
The meaning which designers give to their work is different in each case, depending on the time, style, place, technical discipline and personal vision involved. In this article, I can only outline the formal concepts of design.
 
DESIGN
Design is the process which dictates how an object gets its form. At the same time, it is also the result of that process: the giving of form to a particular product, and thus the ultimate form itself of the product concerned. The course taken by the process of giving form to things, and the development of the form itself, are also determined by the artistic discipline in which the person works.
 
Plastic Arts is the collective name for the visual, plastic orientation involved in the various disciplines of autonomous art, crafts and industrial design, Architecture, sculpture, film, photography, graphic art, glass art, ceramics, painting, drawing, textile design and fashion, new media or media technologies, applied art such as theatrical design, and mixtures of these.
-Sculpture: an object which is formed by cutting, carving or sculpting, using, for example, cold working techniques (with the unwanted material being removed), modelling (the form is constructed out of malleable material) and assembly techniques (joining together discrete elements). Thus, ‘plastic’ materials include substances which can be worked into shape by the application of force, pressure and heat. Plasticity signifies this essence of being pliable, malleable or transformable.
-A statue is any cut, carved or modelled figure, especially of a human being or animal. Sculptors and creators of statues refer to their works as sculptures
-Object: generally, a tangible design or anything which presents itself to the sensory organs (especially the eyes), and in particular a three-dimensional artistic design. An ‘objet trouvé’ is a piece of lost property which, unaltered as such, is used in assembled works and installations. An ‘objet d'art’ is an artistic creation the intrinsic material value which is higher than that of its aesthetic qualities, as in the case of items of decorative jewellery and ornamental articles.
 
The plastic arts can be further subdivided into:
- Autonomous or Fine Art, which serves no purpose other than its own creation.
–Contextual Art extends beyond the immediate scope of autonomous art. It developed at the beginning of this century as a reaction to the art found in museums, which was chiefly oriented towards the historical and the aesthetic. Its content is concerned with political and social questions, and the works of its creators are to be found in galleries and artists' initiatives, on the Internet and in occasional exhibitions.
Monumental Art or Architectural Art, serves society: in public buildings and churches, wall paintings, stained-glass windows, lighting, glass mosaics, tapestries, furnishings and accoutrements are frequently combined to form a single, total design. The word ‘monumental’ means grandiose, grand and majestic, and signifies in this context not the size but the grandeur of outlook and scheme of a picture or image. Thus, a postage stamp or bead may be monumental.
–Mural Art chiefly takes the form of monumental art on walls, such as leaded lights, mural paintings and glass mosaics.
–Public Art developed in the 1960s in America. It is art produced by and for the community, such as monuments, fountains, war memorials or wall paintings in underground railway stations.
N.B.: A distinction is to be drawn between, on the one hand, decorators or rough painters and, on the other, fine artists executing paintings. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the former were dyers and house-painters.

Applied or decorative art: this term signifies, primarily, the function involved, including each discipline of applied art, such as glass design, ceramics, fashion, theatrical design, furnishings or graphic work. Museums of decorative art and design are primarily concerned with the application of form, or decoration as an accoutrement to living areas or interiors. Towards the end of the 19th century, applied art in the traditional sense of the term, with its craft-oriented origins, was transformed into the production of larger items geared to the production of machinery. The Arts and Crafts gloss placed on each product was frequently ‘petit bourgeois’ in nature, and primarily intended as an incentive to persuade women to buy the results of male technology and production. By way of reaction to all the exuberant decoration, the aesthetic quality of the new products was inspired by considerations of form and function/construction, and decoration/ornamentation came to be looked upon as a “crime” (Albert Loos). Whereas, initially, it was the inventors themselves who determined the form of the work, artists were later on employed to imbue products emanating from the spheres of industry and applied art with a purer and more accountable form.
NB: The term Designer originated in 1930, and the “aesthetics of machinery” was subsequently seamlessly associated with Modernism. The rigid teaching of the principles of geometric abstraction guaranteed timelessness, durability, sobriety, purity, uniformity, universality and standardisation.
 
Pictorial language
Designers also express themselves by means of pictorial language. In the sphere of semiotics, that is to say, the linguistics of non-verbal communication, distinctions are drawn between
-Audio-visual language, involving the conveyance of information by means of sound and visual images such as those used in computers, TV, film and video;
-Tactile language, whereby seeing and feeling provide information about the tactile qualities of a given material, or the surface of a form;
-Verbal and non- verbal language, namely a communication process by which individuals ascribe meaning to verbal symbols, whilst non-verbal symbols constitute a pictorial language, series of intonations, gestures, mimicry, physical movement or attitude. This type of art expresses itself in the form of body art, performance art, “happenings”, dance and theatre; and
- Visual language, which chiefly involves the conveyance of information and images by means of visual perception and visible reality.
 
Presentation
In addition to the ultimate, definitive object which results from it, design manifests itself in many different presentational forms, which – depending on the various stages of the design process and the objective underlying their production – are invariably known by other terms, such as:
-Dummy: originally, a book containing empty pages, conceived as a form of presentation; a model in another material, such as plaster, cardboard or wax, or a computer- produced model made of synthetic material(s).
-Model: an example, specimen, form or standard, sometimes displaying a human shape; a small-scale imitation in the form of a replica; a form in plaster or wax, used for the production of the mould for an object which is cast or fused, or a plaster model forming the basis of the artist's work; a type of object used for utilitarian purposes, such as a show house; a fixed, prescribed form.
-Multiple: a work of art produced on a large scale, but also, sometimes, in a limited, numbered and signed edition, such as lithographs, silk-screen prints and etchings, bronze figures and glass objects.
-Draft: a sketch or drawing of a plan, composition or image, preceding the definitive execution of the work, which can be shown to the client and altered as necessary. An initial sketch may be produced prior to the definitive design.
-Pilot collection: a series of different prototypes used as the basis for working on the production of the definitive, perfect models comprised in a collection.
-Test sample: generally, a smaller piece of material used for the purposes of assessment or testing, or a piece of glass taken from a larger whole in order to test out the processing or colour of a surface.
-Prototype: an initial exemplar, or the first, primary crafted model designed for use in the production of mass-produced or industrially produced objects; a standard model used in dealings between the glass factory and the designer.
-Replica: a model produced as a copy of an original work. Many old glass techniques are employed in an up-to-date fashion by the production of replicas, as in the case of the Portland and Diatret vases.
-Serica : a synonym for multiple, this is a term, originating from Leerdam, indicating that an object is produced in small quantities, in hand-made or blown form. The serica objects produced by N.V. Kristalunie, Maastricht, were known as Manuvaria. They are numbered and signed.
-Year objects: organisations and museums frequently issue a special ‘year object’, once a year. Numbered and signed copies are produced in limited editions. Thus, in 1925, the Leerdam Glasfabriek brought out a Year Goblet designed by H. P. Berlage. Each year, the Association of Friends of Modern Glass commissions a special object which its members can subscribe for. These series-produced objects are likewise numbered and signed.
-One-off objects are unique, being produced once only, signed, dated and/or furnished with a certificate of authenticity.
-Blank or parison (voorvorm in Dutch; Kulbel or Kolbel in German): the pre-blown form to which must be applied details of form or processes such as the grinding and sanding of coloured layers of glass, or which is attached to a punty, after which the blank still has to be freehand worked.
N.B.: Families of products into which glass objects may be subdivided – such as: office accessories, decorative glass, kitchen glassware, memorabilia, gifts, sacral glass, items comprised in services or sets, ornamental glass, toys, souvenirs, window glass, illumination, packaging glass and, for example, collectors' items. See the Technique of Material Glass
 
Forms of presentation whereby the body and/or space, as the object, and the person looking at it, as the subject, constitute the most important elements of the design:
Environment: this term has been used since the late 1950s to indicate three-dimensional, collage-like works of art, generally of a temporal nature, whereby the observer becomes part of the work by moving through the spaces contained in it.
Happening: the term is borrowed from the first exhibition held in 1959 by Allan Kaprow in the Reuben Gallery in New York, which was entitled “18 Happenings in 6 Parts”. Members of the public are often participants in such works, forming an element of a composite set of actions, light-hearted demonstrations and theatrical movements through space, aimed at achieving myriad experiences, whereby multi-media technology and theatrical elements, music, objets trouvés and reality itself are given spontaneous form resulting in a total happening. Unlike a stage play, a happening does not have a narrative content. In the body art produced by artists such as Marina Abramovic/Ulay, Gilbert and George, Bruce Neuman and Denis Oppenheim, the body of the artist him/herself is the central medium, becoming part of a still life or sculpture, a ‘tool’ for making, e.g., imprints, the motor setting something in motion or the ‘canvas’ to be painted or cut.
-The term Action came from abstract impressionism (a typically European phenomenon, dating from 1950 to 1970), whereby live, open-ended Events, having a political and social character, took place within the gallery or on the street. The artist – such as Joseph Beuys, Herman Nisch or Arnulf Rainer – is the performer.
-In situ is the term used for works of art presented in the place intended for them. The expression is also used to signify the on-the-spot restoration and examination of, for example, a leaded window or a picture, without its being moved to a studio or workshop.
N.B.: On location is another term used in the field of art, but more usually for the on-the-spot shooting of films or the performance of theatre plays.
Installation: this term generally means the hanging or arrangement of objects in an exhibition, but since 1960 it has been used to refer to temporal, space-specific art. Since 1990 the concept has also come to signify permanent presentations, as in the case of land art within landscapes and other public places such as underground stations, parks or specific buildings. In that context, the art is specially created and applied with that particular space or spot in mind, and the objects have to be looked at not separately but as a whole, together with the space in which they are located. Because most installations are temporal and not readily saleable, the result is frequently documented, publicised and thus re-exhibited.
-Scatter art is a form of installation whereby separate objects are connected throughout the space involved, thus acquiring an extra meaning.
-Exhibiting is the total deployment or arrangement of a work, as, for example, in an interactive museum or a science park, whereby the visitor is actively or interactively involved in the work and can physically experience things.
Performance: a public appearance, involving a multi-disciplinary presentation, whereby, generally, an artist or group of artists appears and performs a series of actions in combination with music or sound, light or projections, and the location, architecture or landscape and its attributes play a role. By contrast with a happening, a performance is often easily repeatable, since it involves a written script.
 
SINGLE AND MULTIPLE VISUAL ASPECTS
Designs are given concrete form by the use not only of visual media and techniques but also of single and multiple visual aspects or elements:
Single aspects constitute, together with the media and techniques of expression, the basic elements used in the creative process, comprising form, material, structure, colour, movement, time, space and light, along with the expressive function, which, in combination with other basic elements, provides an image.
 
Form: the form of an object is its concreteness – the attribute of things that makes them visible, tangible or visually conceivable. The following forms exist:
–Basic forms such as the circle, the square, the rectangle, the triangle, the regular polygon, etc.;
–Closed forms, which have a massive effect and a character which seems to swallow up space;
–Open forms, having an opened-up, space-defining character;
–Residual forms, which relate both to that part of the three-dimensional space or two-dimensional surface which is left between or next to forms and to the negative form;
-Form Details or parts of the form of utensils (stock utensils such as amphorae and urns, scooping and filling implements such as buckets, spoons and funnels; pouring utensils such as jars, cans and bottles, and drinking implements such as cups and drinking glasses) include, for example: the body of the article in question, its lid, neck, bowl, collar, lip, ear, handle, grip, pontil mark, edge, shoulder, base, pedestal, stem, standring, stopper, spout, foot and soul.
 
In the typology of container forms – both in the case of glass or ceramics, and in the case of metal or any other form of material- one can distinguish . Basic Forms being plate-shaped, disk-shaped, sack-shaped, conical, cylindrical, reversed-cylindrical or conical, pointed, egg-shaped and reversed egg-shaped, elliptical, canoptical, beaker-shaped, wedge-shaped, bobbin-shaped, droplet-shaped, rod-shaped, lying barrel, echimical-shaped, globular, spherical or spheroid, cake-shaped, bullet-shaped, pear-shaped, hyperbolic and bell- or trumped-shaped and can be divided further into groups of beaker, tin and box, bottle, pitcher or jar, plate, disk, pan, vase and pot.
Specials forms (often mono-functional) are for instance: salt and pepper pots, ink-pot, oil and vinegar set, pepper box, flycatcher, pudding mould, water barometer, preserving jar or storage-bottle and baptismal font. A drinking-goblet belongs to the beaker or reversed cup-shape like the Angster, goblet, Roemer, Kutrolf, Spechter and Humpen and they can be bell or trumpet-shaped, tulip-shaped, funnel shaped, bucket-shaped, pan-topped or ogee or take many other forms. Those can be found under Product Families in the article material that will be published in coming issues.
NB: Glass Forming Techniques is a better term than “Hot Glass” and acovers those glass forming techniques that use the hot, melted glass mass from the furnace. The term is often used as the opposite of the so called “Cold Glass” and that is why we prefer here to use the term Originating Techniques.
 
Types of shape or elements of the space comprised in the work, include the following:
Point and line;
Two-dimensional surface: the surface of a work is perceived by the person observing it as a neutral element in the space which it comprises. That space does not intrude in the work, and the material used does not intrude in the space: there is no feeling of depth. The object is flat and level, but has two dimensions;
Texture: the visible and palpable or tactile nature of a surface or skin. Light and shadow form an essential component of the surface, and the observer sees how that surface feels: smooth, cold, hairy or rough. N.B. The expressive use of a substance or material may suggest texture by means of painting or, for example, silk-screen printing, but it invariably remains two-dimensional.
- Factuur or work trace is created by the production process, or the work is carried out using the material and applying the maker's handwriting.
Relief: embossment, the fact of something being elevated or brought out above something else/lying uppermost. Various types of relief exist, such as sunken relief or concave relief, whereby the upper elements are on the same level as the surface in which the relief is applied.
-Low relief or bas-relief: whereby the parts in light and shadow are larger than in a textured surface; the protruding upper surface takes up less than half the area of the basic surface beneath it.
-Demi-relief: the space penetrates still deeper into the material, and the basic, underlying surface takes up yet more of that space. However, the protuberances still belong visually to the basic, underlying surface.
-High relief: the upper surface is extremely deformed, with the basic, underlying surface covering more than half the area and the space depth encroaching on that lower surface.
-Surrounding relief, whereby the basic, underlying surface has spatial protuberances but remains in proportion on a scenic and architectural scale;
Environmental relief: the protuberances are so dominant as a form in the space in which they appear that they are experienced as a sculpture rather than as a relief. A sculpture (from the Latin word sculpere, meaning to cut out) is, in the strict sense of the term, a three-dimensional form created by cutting, modelling or assembling, but a sculptural form may also emerge in nature, as a tree trunk, for example, or a boulder. Sculpture mounted on a base is a three-dimensional form standing almost free from the ground surface and supported by some form of foot, pedestal, stand or other device. A statue is usually a representation of a human being or animal, whilst a statuette is a small statue of a human figure. A plastic form (from the Greek words plastikos and plasoon, meaning to form and represent) is a sculpture made of soft, malleable materials, as in the art of modelling, or, in some cases, a sculpture in glass which is formed directly from the hot parison. In a Environmental Relief more elements are presented as a structure in space;
Monolithic mass: (from the Greek words monos, meaning one, and lithos, meaning a stone) a three-dimensional, closed, autonomous form which totally refuses to allow the surroundings to penetrate into it. The term also means a form in its most definite state, such as an ovoid or a piece of a building or sculpture constructed from a single piece of material;
Concave-convex form: the arrogance of the pure form is undermined inasmuch as its surroundings, or the space it fills, penetrates more into that form than in the case of projectionsor denting, excavation or depressions.
Penetrated mass: there is still a feeling of massivity, but the space it occupies penetrates through the closed form by pushing in and perforating;
Planar form: the form is three-dimensional in character, but the surfaces articulate the space;
Planar-Linear form: interplay of lines and surfaces within the space;
Three-dimensional linear form: the space dominates the form, which is built up out of lines and stands with its three dimensions in the space which it occupies.
 
-Aspects of form are expressed in terms such as organic/inorganic, symmetrical/asymmetrical, abstract/concrete, realistic/abstract, figurative/non-figurative, stylised (from styling, meaning the characterisation of a form by the omission of particular or fortuitous elements and the reduction of things to their most intrinsic form), voluminous, geometric, etc.
-Structure concerns the composition, arrangement, connection, construction or organisation of dependent smaller parts into a greater whole. A surfaced structure enables the observer to see how the material came into being, as in the case of the graining of wood, the weave of textiles and the patterns found in granite and the veins of leaves.
 
N.B.: Single aspects such as movement, material, light, colour (and the optic qualities of glass), time and space are dealt with in separate chapters.
 
Multiple aspects of form: the process of giving form to something may further be defined by reference to the following: number (forms may be repeated in such a way as to create quantities, groupings, clusters, configurations and positions, or may be divided up into segments and fragments); balance or equilibrium; contrast or juxtaposition; density, repetition; intervals or space, openings, proportions, gaps; measure and format; organisation; position, location or place; proportions; direction and tension.
 
To be continued in part II>
 
Translation: James Benn
 
©Angela van der Burght
This article is published in 2002 in This Side Up!