Photograph by Ed Pollard, Hasselblad H4D50 - 2021.

Pairs

Artist Audrey Handler (American, born 1934)

CultureAmerican

Date1988

MediumBlown glass; plate glass; sterling silver; 14K gold; walnut, cherry, oak, and rosewood

Dimensions16 × 10 1/4 × 14 3/4 in. (40.6 × 26 × 37.5 cm)

Credit LineMuseum purchase

Object number2020.29

Collections

Glass Art

On View

Chrysler Museum of Art, Gallery 119, Case 70

DescriptionThis is a mixed-media artwork of glass, metal, and wood. The wooden base is made of different colored woods (including walnut, cherry, oak, and rosewood), which are inlaid to imitate a small drop-leaf table with a tablecloth draped over its top. On the surface of this wooden base rests four layers of plate glass that become successively smaller and further shaped into trapezoids and ovals; two of the plate glass layers rest on an oval ring fabricated from sterling silver. Two pears made of solid blown glass are arranged on the uppermost plate glass oval. The colored glass of the blown pears has a mottled appearance from rolling in glass frit during hot working, in green and yellow or red and yellow colors; a flat, polished section on the front of each pear serves as a window to the interior of the fruit. One pear sits on a small blown glass dish, with a cast silver butter knife set before it. Arranged across the plate glass surfaces are small figures, cast in sterling silver and 14k gold; these tiny people are depicted doing various activities (dancing, sitting on a bench, etc.) and are grouped together in pairs.
ProvenancePurchased from the artist by the Chrysler Museum of Art, November 2020.Exhibition History“World Glass Now” third triennial international glass exhibition, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan; plus four other museums in Japan and six museums in Australia; 1988. "Sharper Edges: Women Working on the Edge of Glass," Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass, Neenah, WI, 2018-19. Published References_World Glass Now ’88_ (Sapporo: Asahi Shimbun), no. 65. The Corning Museum of Glass, "Recent Important Acquisitions from Collections Worldwide," in _New Glass Review_ 2022, no. 42, p.114.