About

Established in 1976 by Peter Gudrunas and Doris Fraser, Sirius Glassworks is one of the longest running art-glass studios in Canada. Operating under Peter’s creative vision for several decades, the studio made coveted vessel work with proprietary colour melted from scratch. Since 2013 he worked in collaboration with his daughter Iris Fraser-Gudrunas who pushed the studio to add contemporary iterations influenced by vintage Sirius designs. Since retirement in 2021 the studio continues as a legacy business under Iris’s direction.

The decoration for the Nassau series draws heavily on chance and experimentation by recycling 'failed' pieces within the studio. Work that cannot be sold is reused after it is crushed into shards and rolled onto new work. It is then shaped with hand tools made of wood and steel while the glass is molten. 

Peter says of his craft; “To work with glass is to work with light, both reflected and refracted. I draw inspiration from the glass itself- the material is fluid and transforms from something very responsive to something very fragile. It has its own unyielding rules- I have to stop when the piece is ‘right.’ It requires a certain kind of flexibility that can continually lead down new paths. Even an imperfection can lead to an entire new series of objects.” In our technologically sophisticated time, glass retains even more of its historic mystery- every piece is made by hand and will never be duplicated.