Takeda ───── I would like to move on to the four Silver Prize winners. First I would like Mr Zoritchak to comment.

Zoritchak ───── The work is magnificent. It expresses memory between the past and the present and the coming future. The process is progressive. Oxidation and erosion.

Takeda ───── The other Silver Prize winner is a work by Ida Wieth. I would like Laursen to comment.

Laursen ───── Thank you. Of course it’s a great pleasure for me that among the silver winners is Dane. Long and very heartfelt relations between the Danish glass scene and the Japanese. And we have had the pleasure of receiving in Denmark Mr Fujita and Mr Takeda and other brilliant Japanese glass artists. The name of the artist is Ida Wieth. She is educated in Denmark and in Sweden at design schools and as a master’s apprentice. She has an MA from Edinburgh Colleges of Art and she has been visiting lecturer at the Musashino Art University in Japan. Ida Wieth has her own studio workshops since 2011 and in the Denish Glass Art Museum in Ebeltojt. Recently Ida Wieth has developed a new type of work consisting of glass and ceramics, combining the two materials in works where she stacks pipes of glass and clay, half fired clay, stone work binding them together with copper wire in ‘knots’ inspired by Japanese binding technique. The artist has great sensibility toward the materials. The matte clay and the shining glass pipes is striking and interesting. And she achieves new results in her research in both glass and ceramics.
The title of the work is “Both Sides Now” The artist brings together of achieves fruitful relation brought together in a complete manifestation, compact and forceful.

Takeda ───── The third work is ‘Natural Lace’ by Midori Tsukada. I would like Mr Carlson to comment.

Carlson ───── Tsukada Midori’s work was quite stunning. In looking at how we look or how we judge or how we have evolved with glass, we’ve gone from a sense of beauty and pristine perfection to, in a way, aesthetic, that allows us to respond to what nature has involved us with and what comes along with the natural process of evolution.
So with this piece, what I probably responded to most directly was the interior.
So this image does not necessarily show the strength of the interior, that cellular structure. What she refers to as lace, is both a kind of volcanic interaction, a chemical and mineral evaporation, and a kind of force of nature from a glass studio rather than from nature itself. So the breaking of the bubbles, the blisters that are resulting, are quite a leap for her work.
In previous years I’ve seen other pieces that deal with beauty in a different way.
This one deals with beauty and that kind of hard edged, almost like childhood blisters you get when your shoes are too tight. It’s almost like that, in looking at the interior of this piece and its sense of relationship to the human condition.

Takeda ───── ‘Natural Lace’ is quite a big work. Its width is 62cm. The fourth work is Hidenori Tsumori’s ‘Remains of the Day’. I would like Ms Laursen to comment. Hidenori Tsumori is in the room now. He is quite young, only 29 years old. Congratulations!

Laursen ───── It’s the pleasure that the artist is among us today. The work “The Remains of the Day” is a big work. The height of this work is 60 cm. It is an ambitious and impressive art work. It is sinister and still timeless in its organic, repetitive forms with associations to fossilization processes, to birds’ nests, beehives and caves. The artist mixes glass and potter’s clay in creating his own material used in a technique that generates cracks and irregularities like any organic material world.
The work is highly experimenting in the use of materials and combining with success techniques both glass making and ceramics.
The choice of materials and techniques is excellent for this genuine Expressionist sculpture that seems timeless and beyond the human spheres ruled by the laws of nature.
I want to congratulate the artist with this very courageous and impressive sculptural artwork.