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Member object Friends of Modern Glass 2023 – ‘Hieronymus’ by Evert Nijland
A selection committee, consisting of Maartje Brattinga (glass curator at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam), Christine Vanoppen (visual artist) and Selena Yang (Oooit Art, Utrecht), has unanimously chosen Evert Nijland’s design as the 2023 membership object for the Friends of Modern Glass. The committee consciously chose a designer from a related field, namely jewelry, to show the members of the association the versatility and possibilities of glass as a material. For Evert Nijland, glass is never the starting point, but it often plays an integral role in his creations. He always looks for interesting combinations and material applications that contribute something substantive to his work.

The committee was pleasantly surprised by Evert Nijland’s work and admires the very rich spiritual world he creates. He draws his inspiration from classical art and this influence is clearly reflected in his designs. The committee also appreciates the long-term and equal collaboration between Evert Nijland and Edwin Dieperink. The two have been working together since the mid-1990s, and since 2002 glass has become increasingly prominent in Evert Nijland’s work.

Evert Nijland
Evert Nijland’s design for the members’ object is inspired by the world-famous triptych
‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ by Hieronymus Bosch, which dates from 1503 and is in the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The center panel in particular, entitled ‘Humanity before the Flood’, has fascinated him for years because of the complexity, originality and visual power of the work, and the exciting balance between figuration and abstraction.

A characteristic property of glass is its transparency, and many visual elements from the Garden of Earthly Delights appear to him as if they were made of glass: spheres and fruit shapes in which people and animals crawl in and out and bizarre structures that seem to have the same shine and translucency like glass. Evert Nijland’s design is specifically inspired by the painted fruit shapes and spheres that are pierced by a tree trunk or branch. He has translated this idea into a combination of glass and bronze, where the object “Hieronymus” expresses the merging of opposites such as heavy and light, solid and hollow, open and closed.

As a contemporary jewelry maker, Evert Nijland combines various disciplines of applied art, such as glass, metal, textiles, wood and ceramics. To realize his images, he works closely with specialized professionals and companies. The membership object for the Friends of Modern Glass was created in collaboration with Steffan van Slooten of Edelmetaalgieterij de Viking and glass instrument maker Edwin Dieperink.

Edwin Dieperink
Evert and Edwin share a great passion for glass and have been working together for over 20 years. Edwin was trained at the medical faculty of the VU in Amsterdam and has specific expertise in working with borosilicate glass, a type of glass that is used in the form of tubes and rods and is extremely suitable for the precise and light work required for the development of custom shapes.
For the member object, Evert Nijland used a blown hollow mold onto which several points of solid glass rod have been melted. These protruding glass points “support” a massive branch that is attached to the glass with two bronze rivets. Thanks to Edwin’s years of experience and technical skills with glass, they were able to realize this work of art. The fruitful dialogue between designer and craftsman will soon be celebrated with an exhibition at the National Glass Museum in Leerdam, which will showcase the collaboration between Edwin and various artists and designers from the early 1990s to the present.

-Evert Nijland

Object “Hieronymus” 2023

Glass, bronze

Dimensions: 16 cm X 9 cm X 12 cm