Saddler’s Court Gallery


offers the work of more than 100 Tasmanian artists and crafts people. We choose each piece personally, not in terms of what is fashionable or what sells best, but according to its ability to reflect something of Tasmania.

Richard Clements

Glass craftsman

Apprenticed to GEC in London at the age of 15, Richard learned a great deal from his father, who was a development engineer with the company at the time. Arriving in Australia in 1970 he established Argyle Glass in The Rocks area of Sydney, but moved to Tasmania in 1974, where he bought a small farm and has lived there ever since. Thirty years of glass making have not dampened his enthusiasm.

“To me, glass is all-consuming, fascinating, hypnotic,” he says.

“One of its nicest qualities is the way a piece changes in front of my eyes.

And it’s such good fun! I love making things like sword-swallowing fish, or chickens laying fried eggs.

I like the discipline of traditional forms too, with their organised patterns.

In glass the combinations of shapes and colours are endless- it’s a medium as big as your imagination”