Bradley.Basso: Ray Bradley, Denise mt Basso, Lucio Orsoni
About us
Ray Bradley and Denise mt Basso formed their creative partnership having established a close working relationship and recognized their common interests in the potential of glass to create spatial concepts. The union combines long international experience supporting the dynamic of a new design and creative capability.
Working in conjunction with specialist professionals, through well-established relationships, their innovative uses of glass, in response to space, combine incisive design with multiple techniques and high quality craftsmanship. An added association with the Venetian mosaic artist Lucio Orsoni also provides them with a direct link to complimentary work in that medium.
Their work is mutually supportive whether developed independently or as a duo, and emphasizes the intimate interaction of light, form and space, to orchestrate the boundaries between the interior and exterior, between glass art and design, light sculpture and architecture.
Their tools are transparent, translucent and reflective surfaces, that can modulate the transmission of light to provide function, concept, aesthetics and ambience, to respond to a context, a place, a space, and interact with its public.
Ray Bradley
developed his initial interest in glass during his second year as a student at Wimbledon School of Art, in South London, when he chose to work with stained glass as an alternative to ceramics.
He spent the following two years specializing in the medium, gained his National Diploma and also admission to the Royal College of Art, London. During his three years at the RCA his interest developed towards a broader use of glass as an art form, in context with its variable applications to current developments in architecture and the built environment.
Awarded ARCA, he then established his own studio in West London and over the succeeding years has considerably extended his knowledge and approach to glass, working with it in different ways and in many situations. He has designed and produced commissioned works using glass and other materials, in two and three-dimensional form, for public, private, religious and secular architectural spaces in England, Europe, Africa, the Middle and Far East and Australasia.
During the years 1993-2003 he was also visiting glass tutor for Design and Public Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design, London.
Denise mt Basso
fulfilled her ambition to follow a creative career after business training and responsible positions in the textile and mosaic industries in Northern Italy. Her transition was accomplished by periods of study at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venice (under the Venetian artist Silvestro Lodi and German artist Andreas Kramer).
Subsequently she spent a year in London on an Arts Foundation course, where she developed her initial interest in glass. She then gained acceptance to the three-year BA Honours Degree course, Design and Public Art, at Chelsea College of Art & Design, London, where glass was one of the specialist facilities.
During her time at Chelsea she continued to pursue her course work through the material, which brought significant achievements in national glass competitions, and successfully complete two extremely ambitious projects in her final year. She graduated with 1st Class Honours having also developed a creative empathy with her glass tutor.
After returning to Italy and re-establishing her connections with Venetian mosaic production, as a potential extension to her glass repertoire, she then accepted an offer, working from both Italy and England, to form a creative partnership with her Chelsea tutor.
Lucio Orsoni
has an extraordinary advantage that he shares with hardly any other mosaic artists. Born in Venice with all the colours of mosaics practically in his blood, he grew up as a member of a dynasty, not of mosaic artists or artisans but of manufacturers of mosaic materials, indeed the finest and noblest available in the world. In 1881 his great-grandfather, Angelo Orsoni founded the internationally renowned company that still bears his name.
When Lucio, a member of the fourth generation, was fourteen he was already making mosaics and began to exhibit them through his school, the local State Institute of Art, as he did on other occasions, including the prestigious Venice Biennale.
After studying at the Academy of fine arts he joined the family business and was sent to England to help with the neo-Byzantine mosaic installation in the catholic Westminster Cathedral, but his own mosaics were already basically abstract and experimental.
His early work acted as a catalyst that contributed to the emergence of Italian mosaic from a long period of uninspired convention. He was to become one of the subtlest masters in the long history of mosaic. Through profound thought the distillation of his art form lead him to become the foremost purist of mosaic and certainly one of the worlds’ most important modern artists in this field.