For Peter Layton's solo exhibition, our Marketing and Sales Assistant Eva sat down with Peter to talk about alchemy - from his birth in Prague, a city steeped in alchemical history, to the alchemy he finds in glass itself. Read on to hear how Peter revisited his earlier works for this exhibition, and why he chose to return to the dangerous iridising process.

Iridised work, part of the Alchemist Collection

What first sparked your interest in alchemy?

For me it probably goes back to fairy tales - Hans Christian Andersen, Disney, Snow White and the like. That idea of miraculous transformation stayed with me. Siddy Langley, one of my early assistants, called her first studio Alchemy Glass, and it always struck me as the perfect name for such a magical medium.

Glass invites these words - magical, mysterious, illusory. What is glassblowing if not alchemy? You take the most ordinary materials - sand, chalk, wood ash - and fire transforms them into a unique transparent solid with the most marvellous optical qualities. And then the possibilities are endless: molten glass can be blown, stretched, drawn into threads, poured, cast. Once cold it can be cut, carved, engraved, polished, painted. Very few materials offer this breadth of transformation. It's hard not to feel like an alchemist.

You were born in Prague, a city steeped in alchemical history. Do you feel that heritage has shaped your work, even decades later?

For me, another kind of miracle took place in Prague, in 1939. My parents escaped with me on the last train out of the city, and we were taken in and nurtured in England - something for which my family and I will be forever grateful.

Prague found its way back into my life, too. During the 1980s I experienced some of the high points of my career in glass in Czechoslovakia, at the Novy Bor Trienniales - known affectionately as the Glass Olympics. And of course Prague is the city that gave birth to the Jewish legend of the Golem, a creature formed out of lifeless material. At the heart of that legend is the human desire to create - to transform material into something that didn't exist before. An impulse that has never left me.

Archive Clouds 

How do you see the relationship between alchemy and glassmaking?

The alchemists were preoccupied with transforming matter - changing the very essence of one substance to another. Glassmaking does exactly that. Glass is often described as a super-cooled liquid: although it appears to have all the physical characteristics of a solid, it's actually amorphous, with no internal crystalline structure. After melting, its molecules never revert to a crystalline pattern the way most other substances do. It's said that glass never entirely ceases to flow, deforming imperceptibly over thousands of years.

Tell us about the iridising process - what makes it so special?

The Egyptians set great store by the magical potency of colour, using copper and cobalt oxides to make brilliant turquoise and blue glass for inlays, beads and amulets. Centuries later, Louis Comfort Tiffany became so fascinated by the lustrous effects of the ancient glasses that had been excavated that he strove to develop rich jewel-like qualities by treating glass with metallic oxides.

Iridising has a long lineage. My own route into it was quite practical. In the early days of studio glass, galleries claimed that glass couldn't be shown without special illumination. At my first studio in Rotherhithe, we wanted to create glassware that looked good in any lighting. Norman Stuart Clarke, Victor Ramsey and I researched iridising together, and I still remember the eureka moment when we opened the annealer to discover we'd achieved the most incredible lustrous electric blues. I was also very inspired by the oil slicks and detritus floating past our window overlooking the Thames. These iridised colours became the basis of our production for some years.

The process is somewhat toxic and hazardous due to the unpleasant fumes produced. It is unlikely I will repeat this in future. It seems that alchemy always comes at a price.

Group of iridised pieces, including work by Peter Layton, Siddy Langley and Carin von Drehle, 1980s


Why have you returned to iridising for this exhibition?

Quite simply, because nothing else looks quite like it. The delicious richness of colour, the silken, tactile surface - and its capacity to glow in any light. It felt only right to bring it back for this show. I wanted to bring it back for this show and once again I worked with Layne Rowe to help me create these pieces. 

Iridised work, part of the Alchemist Collection

Iridised work, made for Peter's solo show, 2017

Can you describe how you approach revisiting earlier works - what draws you back to them?

Time passes, I have changed, and ideas and techniques change and develop. That's really the heart of it. Central to my philosophy has always been that each piece must be unique - so when I return to an earlier series, I don’t intend to repeat myself. Ideas that may have lain dormant for years take on fresh aspects and energy, transmuted through time, concept and process.

Clouds, Ebbtide and Landscape are prime examples - series I hope to bring to life again for this significant show. And I've been back into my archive too, digging out trials and research material. The Alchemist Collection grows directly out of those early experiments, brought to resolution some fifty years on.

Pink Cloud on Base


What do you hope visitors take away from the exhibition?

I hope they will find treasures that speak to them - artworks they will live with and which will give them pleasure for years to come. That ultimately is what it's all about.

In Retrospect - 50 Years of Alchemy, runs from 31 July to 30 August. Visit us in the gallery to view the collection or explore the catalogue here.