Wanganui, NZ

Wanganui, NZ

Saturday, 14. September 2013

Kiwi people, kiwi birds, kiwi fruit – every kind of kiwi here.

Wanganui is the glass centre of New Zealand and a small town located in the southern part of North Island. There is currently a glass festival running. Many shop windows display glass from New Zealand artists and there are also some excellent exhibitions. At the same time, two courses are running; Evelyn Dunstan on Kiln casting and Ethan Stern on glass making. Also part of the festival are Charity events, talks and glass blowing demonstrations in the local glassmakers’ school.

Thanks to Karin who organised a lift for us with Di Tocke, we reached Chronicle Glass studio in time for their opening, and got to know Claudia Borella there. As we knew very little about Kiwi glass, we had been in contact with her and she had opened the door to the New Zealand glass world for us. During the evening she organised a place for us to stay and so after two nights in a student house, we moved to Jilly and Gerald Hare’s farm. We spent several happy days there and learnt a lot about sheep. There are roughly eleven times more sheep than people on this island and so we enjoyed a lovely mix of festival and farm work.