Deborah Timperley MSDC

Deborah’s journey to glass, like many other artists, has followed a circuitous route. Her first career was in tourism and catering – working in hotels; managing the catering department at the Guardian Newspaper; running a wine bar. But bubbling under the surface was a desire ‘to make things’ and an evening class in stained glass was the trigger for a major life change resulting in a degree in Glass and Ceramics at Middlesex University.

That was 25 years ago. Now Deborah has become renowned for creating beautiful glass sculptures and bowls. She has shown in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and Lithuania as well as prestigious exhibitions in the UK such as the British Glass Biennale and Collect 2025

Deborah has a workshop on the Borde Hill House and Gardens Estate just north of Haywards Heath in West Sussex. It's a rural location in a converted stable, a place very conducive to thinking and working creatively.

Deborah creates three distinctive bodies of work each of which she has been developing over several years.

First the ‘Rocky wall’ series which explore the beauty of cairns, harbour walls, dry stone walling and rocky outcrops. The compositions are evocative of the land, sea and sky and suggest rocks and stones placed harmoniously together, contrasting defined edges and tree lines with the softness of adjacent vegetation. The blocks of colour echo the surrounding landscape and sky. They have a sense of place and atmosphere.

Deborah has also explored a theme titled ‘Dialogue at the threshold’. Here she draws the viewer into dense cast glass boxes, usually by the allure of 23.5ct gold. She focuses on the area of a form where the opening links the inside and the outside, or the boundary between the two. The interplay between the two articulates a dialogue at the threshold.

Deborah also creates textured cast glass bowls. 23.5ct gold or gold lustre is fired into the glass and sets off the jewel like colours. The surface of the bowls is created by using richly textured fabrics. The juxtaposition of the surface marks such as the weave or frayed edges or structural folds of deeply ribbed fabric create the composition. The edges are highly polished which highlights the colour and contrasts with the opacity of the textured glass.

10 significant achievements

- Collect 2025

- Member of Design Nation

- Represented by Galerie B, Baden Baden, Germany

- Piece acquired by Museum of Design and Contemporary Applied Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland

- Royal Birmingham Society of Artists RBSA Prize Exhibition 2019 and Bath Society of Arts 114th Exhibition 2019

- British Glass Biennale 2004, 2006, 2012, 2015, 2017

- Vitrum Balticum VI, Kaunas - including public lecture - Lithuania 2015

- Art in Action, Oxfordshire 2013, 2014, 2015

- Coburg Glass Prize 2014, European Museum of Modern Glass, Germany

- International Glass Art Biennial, Haacht, Belgium 2014

- ING Discerning Eye, The Mall Galleries, London 1999, 2000, 2013, 2017