Bombay Sapphire Glass Prize show goes on tour

The Bombay Sapphire Glass Prize exhibition goes on tour this week, following an unprecedented double award at last week’s furniture fair in Milan.

Japanese artist Yuichi Higashionna and UK artist Annie Cattrell shared the £25 000 prize money for their chandelier and Capacity pieces respectively.

According to Higashionna, his chandelier piece is a satirical comment on Japanese ‘fluorescent culture’ and the national tendency to make things ‘small, round and cute’.

Cattrell’s Capacity piece, which has been shown as part of a wider series at the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Out of the Ordinary ‘spectacular’ craft exhibition earlier this year, features an intricate recreation of a pair of human lungs in glass.

The winners were chosen from 33 finalists that included glass artists and designers Stuart Haygarth, Gitta Gschwendtner, Judith Schaechter, Emma Woffenden and Bruno Romanelli, by a judging panel that included glass specialist Dan Klein, Nadja Swarovski and curator Lesley Jackson, as well as designers Thomas Heatherwick and Karim Rashid.

The exhibition will tour internationally, hitting London as part of the Grand Designs show at Excel, from 3-11 May, before travelling to Miami and other locations later this year.