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International Art Treasures Web Magazine March 2004 |
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Capredoni Crystal
"The Cobalt Blue on Gold is a sphere where I have a mini universe with the bottom of the piece in cobalt blue and above it is a cloud of gold bursting from the depth of the Ocean." This is the colorful description provided by the artisan, Alfred Capredoni, of the Paperweight (Blue/Gold), demonstrating his love of nature evident throughout his body of work. Alfred explains the beginning of his work with crystal, "A few years back my wife collected depression glass. She wanted to identify the authenticity of some of those pieces. She went to the library and came home with a bunch of books on glass and glass art and there was one book with a chapter on engraved glass and I became fascinated and figured this was something that I wanted to explore. There wasn't really much to go on. I had to really research it on my own, how to go about even scratching on glass. That year I bought myself mini grinders like a Dremel. I began using the glass as another piece of paper, basically scratching an image. I wanted to move the medium further and carve deeper and deeper and create the image inside the glass. That's how I started, almost by accident." Alfred uses the technique of the Old Masters, "The technique is called intaglio engraving, which means to cut into the glass much in the same as coins the art of intaglio engraving is used to make the master for the coins." Alfred was raised in Genoa, Italy. Among his influences are the noted Italian masters "Michelangelo, Leonardo." Alfred has contemporary favorites too, "Robert Bateman would be my influence because I started working with wildlife when he was at the peak of his career. As a matter of fact I exhibited at art shows alongside Robert Bateman and [John] Serry-Lester and Jim Majury and some of the major North American wildlife artists." "I started engraving [with] my first attempt in 1984. Within a year or two I was proficient enough that friends of mine submitted some photos of my work to Steuben in Corning, New York." Alfred was invited to bring samples to Steuben. "The [then] President of Steuben was so impressed that he gave me the title 'Master Engraver' because in three years I had achieved the same level of proficiency as people who had been in the business for forty years."
"As you can see from my pieces nature is really my love and my concept is to create a piece that is not a photographic representation of the animal but rather to capture the animal in it's true nature and to place it in a setting where the animal is in it's natural environment." Occasionally Alfred will sketch from image, "What I do is if I can't get on location I use photos and from the photos I do my own composition. On paper I make a sketch and once the sketch is completed and I'm satisfied I reduce it to the size of the piece that I'm going to create and then using a diamond pen I reverse the sketch onto the back of the crystal piece. Most of the creative work is done once I begin to engrave with the tools where I carve first of all to depth and then to the specific details of the image."
"The Eagle is another piece that I am proud of. The piece I have in mind I call the King of the Sky because the eagle is one of the most majestic birds. The eagle is perched on a cliff and obviously there is a nest nearby where it comes back to feed its family." Alfred remembers the most difficult piece he ever designed, "The hardest that I have ever done was a piece I did for a land developer. This piece was seven panels and the panels were about 36 inches high and 48 inches wide. The panels represented the entire Northern Arctic wildlife starting from the land and the sky and as the panels went down stairs they eventually went underwater with humpback whales, fish and seals. It was a spectacular piece that took me nine months to do."
"Crystal is beautiful for it's clarity and it's shimmer but I wanted to introduce something with color in our line. I wanted to create a line of vases where there is a fantasy of color. The Blue Vase is of particular interest to me because it represents the depth of the ocean." Continuing the theme of Alfred's love of nature that is tantamount in his artwork.
"I wanted to move from the fauna into the flora and create something that was embedded in glass but had that three dimensionality with all the different petals created inside the sphere of glass." Asked to explain the process of creating the Blue Rose Alfred says, "This involves working while the glass is hot. Pick up a stem or a bud of glass from the oven and then attach a colored piece of glass and with a pincher start manipulating the glass and stretching creating the petals. Once this is accomplished then pick clear glass and encase the whole thing until it is shaped like a sphere."
Returning to wildlife but still wishing to work with perfume bottles Alfred created a beautiful stopper for one of his pieces. "I wanted to extend and continue with the concept of wildlife so I thought what would be nicer than combining the vessel with something that is sculptured and creating a stopper shaped like a little hummingbird."
Alfred discussed his future design plans, "We are trying to concentrate on the West Coast [perhaps a] piece on the Calgary stampede and the Oil Industry like an Oil well something that represents Alberta." Whatever the subject the artist will engrave the work, masterfully. |
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