Abigail Reynolds

The glass was made in 2019 from seaweed and sand gathered at Bosahan on the south bank of the Helford River and at Porthmeor beach in St Ives. The colour of the glass reflects the mineral composition of the sand, which at Bosahan contains iron which gives the olive-green hue.

The disk is contained in a steel and copper form, which has been aged in a tidal pool and sealed with beeswax. It is intended to free-stand near a window where sunlight can pass through it.

Book Descriptions:

Tre: 76 pages, foil blocked cover, 225 x 165mm (portrait format)

In 2021 Cornwall’s archive centre Kresen Kernow commissioned the artist Abigail Reynolds to create a permanent piece to celebrate the temporary homecoming of six historic Cornish manuscripts, and explore ideas of home.

Tre, Reynolds’s work for the library window, is built from a constellation of references that reaches back to the oldest Cornish texts that we have. These inform readings of the Cornish landscape, which focus on the circle as a form and a concept. The tree at the centre of her collage is at once a reference to symbology and ritual, to ecology and growth. It is an episodic tree, and this book is in episodes – a sequence of connected thoughts.

This book unpicks the threads of meaning woven into the window, and gathers together the voices of writers and academics, who share some of the many diverging stories and histories to be read in the Cornish landscape.

Flux: 56 pages, foil blocked cover, 165mm x 225mm (landscape format).

In 2019 the artist Abigail Reynolds set out to change a Cornish beach into glass. This book explores her process of glass-making using only the simple materials of seaweed and sand.