(5) Iridescent Art Glass Decorative Objects. Lot includes 2 vases (one signed on the underside indistinctly), an unsigned bell-shaped piece, a tri-footed bottle with an ostentatious stopped signed on the underside by Saul Alcaraz, and a paperweight with the name "HELD" on one side and a sticker from Robert Held Art Glass on the other side.
Largest Size: 4 x 5 5/8 in.
Saul Alcaraz was born in Tijuana, Mexico in 1974, and first studied at El Colegio De La Frontera Norte before immigrating to the United States in 1991, where he discovered glassblowing at Santa Barbara City College. While working as a roofer and teaching himself English, he met and married the daughter of Mario Real, a renowned glass artist, who took him under his wing and led him to focus on glassblowing full time. Eventually taking over as head of the Santa Barbara Glassblowing Studio, he became internationally famous for his ability to imitate, emulate, and evoke Art Nouveau styles, along with the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany, Dale Chihuly, and many others titans of the Art Glass world. He developed a multi-decade partnership with architect Jeff Shelton to produce works for homes, hotels, and museums across the country, both large and small, including MOXI, the Lightner Museum, the Four Seasons Resorts and Ritz-Carltons. Today he continues to lead the company, with his sons Saul Josiah and Joel producing their own works by his side.
Robert Held was born in Santa Ana, California in 1943 and first began painting in high school. He attended the University of Southern California School of Fine Arts, where he discovered ceramics and was awarded the Glen Lukens Award before graduating and then immigrated to Canada to become head of the Ceramics Department at the Sheridan School of Design in Oakville, Ontario. While there he attended a workshop on glassblowing in 1968 and discovered his true passion, leaving a permanent position in academia to open a glass shop in Calgary in the mid 1970s. He moved to a larger facility in Vancouver in 1985, and continued to teach on the side for the next thirty years until relocating once more to Parksville in 2013, where the Robert Held Art Glass studio remained a pivotal part of the local art scene until he retired and closed it down in 2024 after suffering a stroke. He now devotes himself to painting with alcohol ink, with exhibitions of his newest medium at local galleries and art centers, but his earlier glass and ceramic works can be found in public and private collections throughout North America and Europe.
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