First Doll Portrait / The Chinaman

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First Doll Portrait / The Chinaman

Artist Flora Mace (American, born 1949)

Artist Joey Kirkpatrick (American, born 1952)

Place of OriginPilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, Washington

Date1980

Dimensions10 1/4 x 5 7/8 in.

MediumGlass, blown, glass threads, wire

ClassificationGlass

Credit LineGift of Dorothy and George Saxe

Object number

1991.99

On View

Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion (2444 Monroe Street), Glass Pavilion Gallery, 2

Label TextFlora Mace and Joey Kirkpatrick met in 1979 Pilchuck Glass Center, where they were introduced to each other by glass superstar Dale Chihuly, Pilchuck’s founder. First Doll Portrait / The Chinaman, with its depiction of an antique “character” doll of a stereotyped Chinese man, was made at Pilchuck. Mace and Kirkpatrick did a series of cylinders with such antique dolls and other figures. Kirkpatrick was trained as a painter and Mace was a sculptor who had worked with Chihuly since 1975. According to art historian Tina Oldknow, “The two artists immediately began experimenting with ways to translate Kirkpatrick’s images into glass.” Here the image is created by “painting” with colored glass threads that are then marvered (rolled on a flat surface) into the heated glass surface of the vessel.Published ReferencesHollister, Paul, "Personification of Feelings: The Mace/Kirkpatrick Collaboration," Neues Glas 1 (1984), p. 15 (ill.).

"Glass as Art," Sunset Magazine 177, 4 (Oct. 1986), p. 97 (ill.).

Oldknow, Tina, Pilchuck: A Glass School, Seattle, 1996, repr. (col.) p. 172.

Lynn, Martha Drexler, American Studio Glass, 1960-1990, New York, Hudson Hills, 2004, repr. (col.) p. 81.

Koplos, Janet and Bruce Metcalf, Makers: a History of American Studio Craft, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2010, p. 416, fig. 10.43 (col.) p. 416.

Exhibition HistoryNew York, American Craft Museum, Approaches to Collecting, 1982-1983.

Toledo Museum of Art; The Saint Louis Art Museum; Newport Beach, California, Newport Harbor Art Museum; Washington, D.C., Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art Smithsonian Institution, Contemporary Crafts and the Saxe Collection, 1993-1995, pl. 31, p. 59, cat. no. 53, p. 199.