Craft Around the Country

Philip Baldwin and Monica Guggisberg's Collaborations in Glass Might Be Out of This World

Fascinated by the mysteries of the universe, the married couple and longtime collaborators turn their gaze to the otherworldly for a new Florida exhibition.

By Robert Alan Grand
November 11, 2026

Digital Only

Glass

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Photo by Christoph Lehmann

Philip Baldwin and Monica Guggisberg's Aristotle's Amphorae, 2022, free-blown glass, under and double overlay, cut, and metal stands, 25.5 x 78.75 x 19.75 in.

Monica Guggisberg and Philip Baldwin are in awe of biology’s intricacies, the natural world, and humanity’s microscopic place within the long arc of history—and the universe.

These curiosities and deep questions form the bedrock of Precession Through Glass, the latest exhibition from the renowned glass artists. Opening November 15 at the Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida, the show will feature innovative large-scale blown-glass installations commissioned by the museum that explore philosophical, existential, and even otherworldly concepts, replicating metaphysical phenomena in glass to inspire meditative reflection and inquiry.

The Wales-based married couple has worked together for over four decades, moving into large sculptures and major museum installations in recent years. “When you work with a gallery, you have to work with an object that hopefully appeals to a client, but with a museum, you can use objects to tell a bigger story,” says Guggisberg.

Photo courtesy of the artists

Guggisberg and Baldwin.

Guggisberg and Baldwin are known for employing a unique surface technique that blends Italian battuto, which gives a semblance of beaten metal, with Swedish hot-shop overlay to add a thin, skin-like layer of color to their designs. In sculptural works, the artists use these vibrant, textured glass pieces to build upon each other, creating a luminous multiplicity.

The show’s title, which shares a name with a room-sized installation, refers to axial precession, the gradual wobble, similar to a slowly spinning top, of the Earth’s axis over a 26,000-year cycle that affects celestial coordinates and other astral effects.

Another colossal piece, Cosmic Serpent, draws on DNA’s double helix structure, with the artists wrapping 198 blown-glass amphora in various colors around twisting metal bands. “Our representation combines the scientific DNA with our own personal story,” Baldwin says, noting that the ancient-style vessels, recognizable by their narrow necks and wide cylindrical bodies, act “like chromosomes in the sense that they are transmitters of information of goods of value across cultures,” while also referencing the couple’s history in production glassware.

Photo by Alex Ramsay

The White Goddess, 2026, and Endgame Options, 2024, free-blown glass, underlay, double overlay, coldworked, flat glass, sand, metal, glue, assembled, dimensions variable.

Guggisberg and Baldwin also aim to visually illustrate the double helix’s unlikely nature to show why Francis Crick, the molecular biologist and biophysicist who co-discovered DNA’s structure, “claimed that it was impossible for such a sophisticated biological development to have been born from Earth and had to arrive from elsewhere—whether with a meteor or what have you,” Baldwin says.

Crick and his colleagues “weren’t disputing Darwin,” and his concept of evolution, says Baldwin. “They were just enlarging the scope of Darwin, which we think is interesting.”

“Science is a process, it’s evolving,” Guggisberg says. “It’s not written in law, because then you discover something new and you have to re-question what you have believed up to now.”

The story they hope to tell in Sarasota? One that compels people “to reflect with wonder and humility about our larger environment,” Baldwin adds, noting that humans are only a small part of the timeline, with much left to deliberate and discover.

Photo by Alex Ramsay

Paniers Series, 2025, free-blown and cut glass with under and overlay, 12.5 x 9.25 x 9.25 in.

Photo by Alex Ramsay, courtesy of the artists

The Pleiades, 2023, free-blown and cold-worked glass with overlays, steel, and paint, 59 x 135.5 in.

Robert Alan Grand is a writer and photographer based in Asheville, North Carolina. He received the 2025 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant to cover contemporary art in southern and central Appalachia.

Learn more about Philip Baldwin and Monica Guggisberg's work online.

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