Sue is a part time lecturer at The University of Central Birmingham, where she teaches within the course of 3-D design. She began her career as a maker working first with clay exploring organic forms as an inspiration for pots and ceramic sculptural pieces.

She then trained in glass at Stourbridge specialising in kiln formed glass. Interest in the history of early glass led her to research the mosaic and kiln forming techniques first developed and used in the 3rd century BC, the Hellenistic period. She was awarded a doctorate for this research and the techniques she re-discovered are used in her current work in glass.

Her colourful mosaic bowls vary in size from large single table centre pieces to tiny dressing table bowls, each is unique. They are compromised of hundreds of small pieces of glass which are fused into a finished product, the construction process that involves a triple kiln firing. Susan starts by making long rods of individually coloured glass, which are produced from molten glass at a temperature of 1,100c. The rods are then chipped into tesserae, small glass counter like pieces; these are then fused into flat glass blanks during a second firing of 850-900c.

The final ‘forming’ stage involves the glass being heated again to no higher than 680c, at this temperature the glass is softening and can now be formed into the final shape by slumping into a metal or clay former. This process may be repeated several times to achieve the desired final shape. The edges of the more formal bowls are sometimes cut and polished, other times they are quite free.

As well as the range of colourful bowls that Susan produces, she also makes single flat decorative panels of architectural glass. Susan adds “You can put any pattern, colour or texture into such decorative panels.” Recent work has taken landscape and the natural world as inspiration to create abstract or impressionist images fusing coloured glass to create translucent images.

Susan believes that the medium of glass continues to be dynamic and to contribute to contemporary design. “Since the late 1970’s and 1980’s, glass art in the UK has been emerging from the confines of traditional glass to find ever increasingly new styles to become a more powerful art form with a much wider audience.”

Sue lives on the slopes of Titterstone Clee Hill in South Shropshire.