With the death last week of glassblower Julio Santos, at age 85, the Hunter has lost a notable artist and a highly innovative artisan with an extraordinary empathy for his materials.
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His work from many exhibitions is in major collections in Australia and Portugal, the land of his birth. His work has been exhibited world-wide and chosen for many official presentations, including as wedding presents for royalty, among them for Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.
Here in the Hunter Region his handsome functional bubbled glasses and jugs or jewel-like scent bottles are instantly familiar, favourite purchases from the shops of the region's art galleries.
Julio Santos, born in 1933 in the Portuguese glass centre of Marinha Grande, was already a master glassblower when he arrived in Newcastle in 1968 to work at the Leonora Glassworks in Hamilton North for Philips Lighting Industries. Apprenticed at the age of 12, he had worked in several traditional ateliers in Portugal and later in Germany, fabricating specialist scientific instruments, before a chance chat with the Australian ambassador in Bonn persuaded him to come to the Antipodes.
A new interest in glass as an art material in the 1970s saw Santos asked to teach at various art schools, including Newcastle CAE between 1976 and 1978.
Between 1978 and 1982 he commuted to Melbourne, where he had a major role in establishing crucial hot glass workshops at the then Caulfield Institute of Technology, later part of Monash University. It was here that many of Australia's senior contemporary glass artists learnt their skills.
From 1982 he also had his own purpose-built workshop in Medowie, which he chose for the quality of its sand; he could take a wheelbarrow load to his furnaces directly from the dunes outside his back gate.
He devised novel techniques so he could work alone, creating objects traditionally fabricated by teams of artisans. Constructing a goblet, for instance, traditionally involved three workers: one to bring molten glass from the furnace to the master to blow the bowl, the third to twirl the bowl while the master made stem and then foot. Santos's series of pulleys and pedals meant he could do all three operations without an assistant.
These innovations and his vibrantly coloured vessels inspired many honours in Portugal, where in recent years he was recognised as a national treasure, invited to demonstrate his techniques at major institutions. In 1998 the city of Marinha Grande conferred on him the honour of the Most Internationally Recognised Master Glassblower of Portugal.
He re-invented the demanding latticinio technique, first used in Venice in the 16th century, where networks of fine lines animate the surface of blown glass vessels, a delicate balance between hand and eye. These distinctive works and many vase-like cylinders in brilliant swirling colour were exhibited to great acclaim at Maitland Regional Art Gallery in 2010.
A visit to his workshop was always an occasion. To witness a master craftsman manipulating elemental fire, air and water to create elaborate vessels was a sort of magic.
A Mass of Thanksgiving funeral service for Julio Santos is scheduled for Friday, April 26, at 1.30pm at St Michael's Catholic Church in Nelson Bay.
