Elzbieta Larsten

Elzbieta Larsten makes glass apples. Each one is mouth-blown, then given a stem of hand-forged rusty iron and something unexpected: feathers, brass wire, silver, platinum, or 24-carat gold leaf. The contrast between raw metal and the shine of glass has become her signature.

Nature is the starting point. An apple tree flowers outside the studio each May, and the apples on the shelf borrow its colours, from blossom pink to the deep red of late September.

Her fascination with glass began in childhood. Glass lives its own life, she says. It plays and misleads. It does not always turn out as imagined, and sometimes it turns out better. That is the whole idea behind Happy Apples. They are not meant to be perfect or symmetrical. Like us, they carry marks and traces of the way they were made.