Point Engraving on Glass. (The Decorative Arts Library)

Engraving on glass promises immense expressive potential, manipulating light as no other medium. Whistler writes: "We all crave light, feast on it every day, utterly depend on it, and dread total darkness as equivalent to blindness. Light rules. And engraved glass, in its unobtrusive way of celebrates this truth".

With the insight of an expert and innovative practitioner, Laurence Whistler explains the development of point engravings, its flowering in Venice and Holland from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, a long hiatus after the demise of Dutch stipple engraving in the early nineteenth century, and its modern revival from the 1940's. Featured pieces range from Amen glasses, goblets and bowls to Whistler's own church window in Dorset. The text is enlivened throughout with poetry and other quotation, selected with the author's specialised eye.

The book also features suggestions for further reading and a list of places to visit with holdings of point engraved glass.

As with its sister volumes, discerning readers will find the format and the contents of this title in the Decorative Arts Library refreshing and delightful.