Station: [50] Jörg Zimmermann: Honeycomb Object

Sprecherin

Jörg F. Zimmermann, born in 1940 in Uhingen near Göppingen, is a glasscutter, glass painter, designer and a visual artist. He has been teaching at the visual arts Academy in Stuttgart using the only glass furnace used for academic purposes in the state of Baden-Württemberg, since 1983. Zimmermann’s mesh or honeycomb objects enjoy world fame and we have had some of these in our studio glass collection for a long time.

Sprecher

Zimmermann’s leitmotif that underlies all of his honeycomb objects is the illustration of a principle of order. All he wants to do is to make the inner structure visible and demonstrate what an external intervention can mean for the internal. Zimmermann considers the metal mesh that he uses to blow the hot glass through and the cell-like rows of bubbles that it creates an adequate design medium that is reiterated in nature and more importantly, the mesh and the rows of bubbles make the creation process so typical of studio glass, visible.

Sprecherin

Using a glassblowers’ pipe, Zimmermann shapes the glass into a large bubble. He then cuts it in half with a diamond saw and thus exposes the inner structure. He damages it and processes it was a Sandblaster and he projects the form of the mesh to the outside by using fused coloured glass layers on the inside. In this way his honeycomb objects become a complex allegory for the danger and vulnerability of our sensitive internal world.