A Different Kind of Bloom
What happens when broken glass is made to bloom? Exploring Maarten Vrolijk's Sakura works.
A Maarten Vrolijk Sakura vessel can weigh thirteen kilograms. Its surface appears covered in clusters of petals, crystals and fragments caught halfway through a transformation. Some protrude from the body, while others seem to have melted into it. Colour gathers unevenly around the form, leaving portions of the glass beneath exposed. The objects suggest something growing, yet their elaborate surfaces begin with something quite different: broken glass.
The Dutch artist makes each vessel by combining glassblowing with the fusion of coloured fragments. He begins by arranging broken pieces of glass into a planned composition, which is then heated to prepare it for fusion with the developing blown-glass form. The fragments become part of the vessel rather than a decorative layer applied to a finished object. Their irregular shapes produce the raised surfaces through which Sakura is immediately recognisable.
“It is always about the contrast; much is beautiful next to little, and coarse is beautiful next to refinement.”
There is considerable risk involved. The exceptional thickness of the vessels makes cooling particularly demanding. As the glass loses heat, differences between its interior and exterior temperatures can create enough stress to cause fractures. “The cooling of my Sakura glass is really very slow to prevent breakage,” Vrolijk tells Magelier. The final result cannot be seen until the cooling chamber is opened. For all the planning involved in making a piece, there is still a period in which the artist must simply wait.
Sakura takes its name from the Japanese cherry blossom, a subject tied to Vrolijk's childhood in the Netherlands. A cherry tree in his family's garden left a lasting impression on him, particularly the transformation of its dark branches each spring. Rather than reproducing the structure of an individual blossom, the vessels suggest flowering through the accumulation of coloured fragments.
Vrolijk frequently compares his approach to painting. “I paint with glass,” he tells Magelier. Colour and composition are central to both practices, but glass introduces conditions that paint does not. The fragments must be heated and fused to the vessel, and their final appearance cannot be entirely determined in advance.
“The cooling of my Sakura glass is really very slow to prevent breakage. It takes patience to see the final result. But the reward is great when the cooler can finally be opened.”
The series has been developing for at least a decade. Works documented in 2016 already contain the essential relationship between a rounded blown-glass body and clusters of fused fragments. A 2019 vessel, Sakura TRP19022, contrasts deep burgundy and pale pink with scattered jewel-like pieces. In the 2024 work TFO24014, a lighter palette of pink, green and translucent glass extends across much of the rounded body. The amber-coloured TFO25005 from 2025 is taller, its fragments forming a dense, uneven covering. A 2026 vessel such as TFO26004 returns to stronger colour contrasts, with orange glass, pale sections and clusters of multicoloured fragments.
These variations don't suggest a steady progression towards greater complexity. The early vessels already show many of the characteristics visible in the recent works. What changes is the distribution of colour, transparency and density across each form. Asked how he decides where the fragments should gather and where the glass beneath should remain visible, Vrolijk points to contrast: between abundance and restraint, coarse fragments and finer details.
The approach extends to Sakura's suspended lighting pieces, where illumination introduces another variable. “By illuminating the glass an entirely new reality emerged, in which every detail of the glass becomes visible,” Vrolijk explains. He describes how the pendants change completely when their lights are switched on. The fragments that define the vessels' exterior surfaces are now also experienced through light passing from within. The glass remains the same, but the light changes what we see.
“The amazing thing is that the Sakura pendants change completely when the lights are turned on.”
Working with his team, Vrolijk continues to test what is possible with the material. He makes decisions about colour and composition while leaving room for unexpected developments during production. His experience doesn't eliminate uncertainty, nor does uncertainty replace the need for planning. Both are present in the finished work, although their respective contributions cannot always be separated by looking at it.
This becomes particularly interesting when the earliest Sakura vessels are considered alongside the recent ones. Ten years have not replaced the original technique with a succession of increasingly elaborate methods. Instead, the same underlying process has accommodated different proportions, concentrations of colour and degrees of transparency, eventually extending into objects that incorporate their own illumination.
The first Sakura works already possessed the elements that make the series recognisable today. What has continued to develop is the range of decisions that can be made with them. A technique can evolve not by becoming more complicated, but by allowing more possibilities.
