Ivo gets the award for the most creative 'what is it' response... :smg:
Hey ahremck, I seem to have a knack for Japanese Glass for some odd reason. Most of my research has come from ebay (labeled) pieces, owning so much of it over the years, although I sold pretty much all of it many years ago, and persuing the internet, mostly through obscure Japanese sites. As to book wise, no, there is not really anything out there in regards to Japanese Glass unfortunately.
I have listed in the Glass Reference section a Japanese site that contains many of the glass artists, especially those since the 60's. It is not very comprehensive unfortunately and not really updated. But it does have a biography of where they have worked for some of them.
http://www.kuripa.co.jp/glass-art/index.htmlI have a few more websites which I should put up here, which I will do when I pull the book out of the box.
I did some googling on Gempo and a lot of the earlier stuff seems to be Japanese Glass, which would not surprise me being seeing close to Australia and being a giftware importer (mass production and cheap). They also sold a lot of pottery as well. Some marked Germany. I assume they probably source there goods from other countries now due to cost (China, Taiwan etc)...