by Alva Gallagher
Lucent Pearl
Artist: Alva Gallagher
Description: An oyster caught mid-sentence, holding the one thing it made.
Lucent Pearl is a study in two kinds of surface. The outer shell is all texture — frilled, crusted, layered in the ragged way an oyster actually grows, cast in bronze with a cool grey-violet patina that catches shadow in every ridge. Turn to the open face and everything changes: a smooth, pale, almost pearlescent interior, wiped clean of incident. Resting in the low point of that hollow is a single blown glass pearl, luminous and perfectly round.
The tension is in that final object. Everything around it is rough, weathered, hard-won; the pearl is effortless and complete. Gallagher works in cast bronze and molten glass and this piece puts both at their extremes in one form — the density of metal against the light-holding transparency of hand-blown glass. The glass is the only part of the sculpture that does anything with light rather than simply receiving it.
The shell rises from a twisted, tapering foot to a clear base, so the whole form appears to hover rather than sit. Seen straight on, the silhouette is unexpectedly dramatic — a wide, wing-like sweep balanced on almost nothing.
Alva Gallagher grew up in the fishing village of Killybegs in County Donegal, and the sea is the subject underneath everything she makes. She studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and was the first Irish recipient of a partner scholarship to Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle. Her work is held in the National Museum of Ireland, the Deloitte and BMW art collections, and 30 St Mary Axe in London, alongside private collections across Europe, the US and Australia.
It is a piece that rewards proximity. On a console, a hall table, a study shelf or a lit niche, it invites people to come close and look into it — and the pearl only reads properly from a metre or so away.
Size: [PLACEHOLDER: H × W × D in cm] ([PLACEHOLDER: inches]), including base.
Price: Price on enquiry
Cast bronze with hand-blown glass, on a clear base. [PLACEHOLDER: edition details — e.g. “Edition of 9, signed and numbered by the artist” or “Unique work”.] Supplied with documentation of authenticity.
Display tip: the glass pearl needs a light source above or slightly in front to glow properly. Backlit or in flat ambient light it reads as an opaque white ball and the piece loses its centre.
[PLACEHOLDER: confirm and complete — e.g. “This is a signed and numbered cast from a limited edition of 9. Each cast is finished by hand and each glass element is individually blown, so patina and pearl vary slightly between casts.”]
It is hand-blown glass, made by the artist. Glass is what allows the pearl to hold and release light at this scale — a natural pearl of the same proportion would not.
No. The blown glass element and the
Size: medium
POA
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