About the Sculpture

The glass designs on the sculpture are simple linear abstractions of the courses of the Dee and Don. The initial inspiration for the design of “Two Rivers” came from the setting of the Bridgeview Building (on the River Dee), the location of the Morning Glass workshops (above the Dee) and the location of the maker's home (on the Muir of Alford, Donside). The origin of the name “Aberdeen” is related to the position of the original town, “between two rivers” and the shape of the city today, and it's infrastructure, is still heavily dictated by these two major geographical features.

In creating a simple representation of the river courses (albeit altered to fit the format of the medium) the aim was to strip away the man-made aspects of the rivers and focus on their main physical characteristic, the shape they currently hold as they flow the hundred miles or so from the Cairngorms to the North Sea. Hopefully this will help people to focus again on the linear nature of the rivers, their length and their curves.

About the maker

“Two Rivers” was designed, constructed and installed by Gordon Watt, owner of the Deeside based architectural glass company Morning Glass. The company specialises in contemporary architectural glass for domestic and commercial settings. Essentially self-taught, Gordon established the business in 2001 and now works from a fully equipped glass workshop in Kincardine O'Neil. Domestic scale, functional fused and cast glass pieces (including tiles, splash backs, bowls and wall and window hangings) are sold in selected galleries, while larger scale architectural panels and stained glass construction and restoration projects are carried out on a commission basis.

How “Two Rivers” was made.

The sculpture consists of two columns of cast sheet glass. The whole process of manufacture took approximately 6 weeks. The stages involved in the production of the sheets were as follows:

• The course of the each river was traced from Ordnance Survey maps, and then scaled up to fit on the glass sheets.

• A tracing onto ceramic fibre paper was made of the scaled drawings, and these were cut, smoothed and shaped by hand to give a flowing, sinuous line.

• The moulds were placed on a large sand bed inside a flat glass kiln, and the moulds and sand were dusted with a separator to stop the glass sticking when it melted.

• Large sheets of glass were cut, polished and carefully placed onto the moulds.

• The glass was fired to 850 degrees celsius, until it was soft enough to pick up all the detail from the mould. It was then cooled very slowly to prevent it cracking. Each sheet required a 24 hour cycle of heating and cooling

• The sculpture is suspended from stainless steel wire, using purpose-made glass clamps.