For over forty years, Barbara Nanning has been an internationally renowned artist with works in numerous public and private collections around the world. Describing herself as a ‘three dimensional designer’, the Dutch artist quickly gained global recognition for her unique vessels and sculptures.

After graduating from the renowned Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Nanning started out her career as a ceramicist. She introduced to the medium vivid colours that had only previously been possible in painting and gave an unexpected, almost unreal dimension to her work. Nevertheless, Nanning soon took the surprising step of adding glass to her repertoire — the material on which she would eventually focus exclusively. Experimenting with pate de verre, glass blowing, and metal gilding, she fuses different worlds into an entirely personal visual language.

Nature, both organic and inorganic, is a constant source of inspiration for Nanning. She studies multifaceted crystals, soft jellyfishes, flowers and micro-organisms with a particular fascination with form, structure and geometry. Her constant thirst for new challenges has led Nanning to Nový-Bor in the Czech Republic. There she enjoys the support of the most talented glassblowers and polishers, but above all the possibility of employing colour in a totally new way. In Nový-Bor, Nanning glassblows her forms, which are then sawn up, ground, polished and sandblasted.

Barbara Nanning combines tradition with innovation, Eastern opulence with Dutch austereness, freedom with structure and reason with emotion. Her work is a fusion of classical artisan methods and innovative materials. As a result, her language does not comply with an existing one, but forms a universe all of its own.