Stone Rosette

One of Karla Trinkley's major influences was the archeological collection of the University of Pennsylvania Museum.  There, she first saw examples of the ancient Egyptian glass-casting technique called pâte de verre, which translates into "glass paste."  Later, as a graduate student in the early 1980s, she invented a scientific method to produce cast glass.  Today, Trinkley is an acknowledged master of the technique.

Stone Rosette exemplifies the soft, waxy colors, gritty texture, and inner-core design of Trinkley's cast-glass work of the early 1990s.  It has the air of a recently unearthed antiquity.  In one sense, its title is a straightforward reference to the circular floral motif used throughout.  But, the name also alludes playfully to the Rosetta stone, the block of glass-like basalt that supplied the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics.