China Glass 2009 exhibition
2008-08-11

                                                                                                                                              China Glass 2009 to be Held in Shanghai in May 2009

The 20th China International Glass Industrial Technical Exhibition (China Glass 2009) will be staged at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre on 13-16 May, 2009. The organizer is the Chinese Ceramic Society and co-organizer is the Shanghai Ceramic Society. The exhibition will be run by the Beijing Zhonggui Exhibition Co., Ltd.

Initiated in 1986, the China International Glass Industrial Technical Exhibition (China Glass) is an annual grand gathering of the glass circles in the world (even years in Beijing and odd years in Shanghai). During the course of its development, it has long been supported by all glass-related governmental departments and nationwide industrial associations of China, including Chinese Building Materials Federation, China National Light Industry Council, China Machinery Industry Federation, and China Association for Science and Technology, China National Association for Glass Industry and Chinese Architectural and Industrial Glass Association. Owing to uninterrupted innovation and development in the past two decades, China Glass has become one of the three largest international glass exhibitions in the world and as famous as glasses held in Düsseldorf, Germany and VITRUM held in Milan, Italy, and serves as a platform for trade talks and technical exchanges, which has the largest scale and greatest commercial significance in the Chinese glass industry.

In April this year, China Glass 2008 was successfully completed in Beijing. It covered an area of 53,000 square meters and totally 738 exhibitors, including 248 foreign companies, came from 21 countries. They gathered in all the ten exhibition halls. Germany, Italy, the USA and Belgium sent their State exhibitors groups to attend the show. The event attracted 30,391 professional visitors, of which over 2622 came from 88 foreign countries.
China Glass 2009 will be staged at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre on 13-16th May next year. Thanks to the good reputation and brand effect of the China Glass exhibition in the world, it is expected that the 2009 event will have more than 30,000 professional visitors from over 100 countries, including about 3000 from foreign countries.


On the other hand, glass exhibition contains not only business-like market, but also includes non-selling art exhibition.

This exciting exhibition was conceived as a showcase for the miniature art form of glass beads to run along side the British Glass Biennale 2008.
Several major internationally renowned glass sculptors were challenged to try their hands at this tiny scale of work along with well known and up and coming glass bead artists who will be presenting their interpretations of Shakespeare’s play 'The Tempest' in the form of one sculptural glass bead each. The small scale of these beautiful little objects belies their complexity and the skill required to produce them but also makes them very approachable and some will be on open display so that their tactile qualities can also be appreciated. They are after all meant to be able to be worn or carried around on the person.
The theme of ‘Tempest’ was chosen to link with other events based on the play at the International Festival of Glass during which the British Glass Biennale and ‘Tempest’ Exhibition will be opened, all taking place in Sturbridge, a great historical centre for glass making. There will also be Master Classes and demonstrations of glass bead making during the Festival.
Photographic interpretations of some of the pieces by photographer, Lucy Hunt, will be shown along side the beads. 

‘Tempest’ Exhibition aims to draw attention to this delightful form of work and some of the artists who dedicate themselves to it, blurring the boundaries between large and small scale work and challenging preconceived ideas about glass beads by treating them as the highly sculptural works that they can be.
The form of the glass bead is older than the vessel and just as valid a canvas. We have ancient glass beads thought to be in excess of four thousand years old. The beads on show here could easily also last that long, never diminishing in their permanent brilliance of color. The Japanese people have used the ‘opine’ bead as a tiny art canvas for many centuries. They now make contemporary glass beads which they call ‘Tombo-dama’ which try to encapsulate a sense of the cosmos in each small globe.

Both exhibitions will run for six weeks and ‘Tempest’ will be situated in the sociable Glasshouse Coffee Shop at Ruskin Glass Centre with free entry.
This is a non selling exhibition as it will be touring for some time after its opening in Stourbridge, the first confirmed venue being Creative Glass in Zurich. Some extra beads by exhibiting artists will be on sale in the Festival office during the International Festival of Glass.