DEBORAH THOMAS
England
Circa 1990
Glass, wire, metal, incandescent lights
43″ high x 30″ diameter

The artist Deborah Thomas trained as a sculptor first, then a theatre designer, and the unique light sculptures she has been fashioning from metal wire and recycled glass shards since the 1980s have the magnetic power of theatre. Her emergence was contemporaneous with a British movement in art that became known as “Skip Culture,” including other artists such as Ron Arad and Creative Salvage (the collective of Tom Dixon, Mark Brazier Jones, Nick Jones and later Andre Dubreuil). In her Stratford-upon-Avon studio, Thomas reuses the humble material of broken bottles to create spectacular chandeliers. Each glittering light fixture takes months to complete, and no two are the same. This one is from a series called “Broken Ice.”

To us, there’s a wonderful frisson between the jagged shards and the Baroque elegance of the design, between the ideas of salvage and luxury.

Thomas’s work can be found in the Victoria and Albert and the Ashmolean museums in England, and in important private collections around the world.