Large Brooch, 2023

Andrea Walsh is an artist based in East Lothian, Scotland. She studied fine art before a masters degree in glass, and set up her studio in 2005. Andrea’s work explores a range of materials including ceramics, glass and metal, to create exquisitely crafted, timeless and unique pieces. Her work is included in private and public collections worldwide including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh, and she was selected as a finalist in the BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour Craft Prize 2017, and the LOEWE Foundation Craft Prize in 2019.

‘My work is an exploration of the box and vessel form, through which I am interested in ideas of containment, materiality, preciousness and value. Working with glass in combination with fine bone china, I seek to celebrate their shared material qualities including purity and translucency and am influenced by their alchemic nature and rich historical associations. Contained Boxes are my most recent series of work. In each piece the vessel is kiln cast in glass, forming an individual vitrine, which cradles a small ceramic box within. Intimate in scale, the work embraces tactile investigation due to it’s form, size and proportion and evokes a response akin to jewellery, eliciting the desire to hold and to cherish. Each single work in this series results in an entirely unique study of interior and exterior, their direct relationship, and captures a subtle, timeless presence. The opacity of the container can conceal, or if translucent can veil, the contained box held within, which is revealed only when the viewer is drawn closely to look inside from above. Therefore the display of these pieces is integral to the work, where differences and relationships between the pieces can be experienced, and yet where they are also afforded the space to breathe.’ – Andrea Walsh, 2018.