Following 7 years of success participating in Toronto’s premiere design festival DesignTO, Sylvia Lee, Executive and Creative Director of The Goodman Studio, is launching Salt Frames, a series of three interior screens and two tables inspired by aerial images of salt fields.

DesignTO’s platform of presenting exhibits in shop windows has been a perfect platform for Lee over the last 7 years, which has seen her award winning glass installations featured in high profile Toronto galleries and showrooms. This year Lee is pleased to be partnering with luxury retailer CLEMENTINE’S, so customers and the community can see her new works during the day and illuminated at night.

Lee was inspired by aerial views of salt fields, which are sprawling, dynamically coloured fields of evaporating salt, geographically separated by levees.  The bright and varied colouring of the fields is varied by the salinity of each pond, and microorganisms change their hues as the salinity of the ponds change.

Lee says of her initial inspiration. “It seems incredible to me that the natural biology and chemistry of these salt fields paint the most delicate colour combinations. The levees that create the geometry around the fields are a human intervention creating an accidental stained glass appearance. I wanted to explore the colour and geometry of the salt planes in champagne glass. This particular glass is filled with tiny suspended organic bubbles, and feels perfect for this project.”

Salt Frames marks Sylvia’s multi-year exploration of distance and perspective, with other festival installations exploring distant landscapes through a keyhole and a telescope in glass.

This newest incarnation is a collection of three vertical screens with geometric, suspended pieces of champagne glass secured on in a metal framework.  Each has its own colourway inspired by the salt fields.  They are beautiful as stand alone pieces, but when layered the coloured glass creates new and unexpected tones.

The champagne glass finds itself as the surface on two sizes of cocktail tables. “As much as there is artistry in these pieces, I always like to find the architectural functionality. So these layered screens and tables can live as working pieces in the built environment.