Charles Ede are delighted to announce their collaboration with the renowned curator, publisher and art and design dealer, Oscar Humphries.
click to view the exhibition
"The first piece of Roman glass I bought was from Charles Ede, perhaps ten years ago. I still have it, and today it sits at home with another Roman glass dish and a conch shell. The shell was picked up on a beach somewhere sunny, where these shells were in abundance. Glass is made of sand, and blown glass has an organic feeling, so I like them placed together – the pink shell and the blue glass. Both the Roman glass and the shell trigger memories, as every object should. Proust said that ‘Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.’ Perhaps the holiday the shell memorializes was not quite as perfect as I imagine it to be, and of course, our collective idea of Rome is more about imagination than history.
Rome is an idea, as much as it is a place, or a period in time. That glass made in the Greco-Roman period survives is a kind of miracle. And each bowl or cup or chalice is a small wonder. Marble withstands – largely – the winds of time, and it’s marble, largely, that has formed our vision of ancient Greece and Rome. The ancients used glass as we do, making from it functional or decorative objects, and objects that are both.
With Martin Clist and Charis Tyndall from Charles Ede I have selected a group of glass objects that each tell a story about why they were made, how they were made, and in some cases, what happened to them after. With this collaboration I wish to share things I love, to inform, to learn more myself, and bring to a new audience these beautiful, under-appreciated, and undervalued works of art. Also right now I want to connect with history – something solid, as so much of today feels transient and as we face the unknown, better to connect with the past; real, enduring, and material in these objects."
- Oscar Humphries
