The glass menagerie

FOR MUCH OF HER LIFE, Leisa Wharington has been under the spell of glass. She was only 10 when she took classes with a local potter on the Mornington Peninsula, and it was there that she saw her first glassblowing demonstration. “This glass business was so fluid and amazing, and the atmosphere in the studio was dynamic!” says Leisa. “The fluid material was boiling hot, and you had to use tools to manipulate it. I was hooked on the drama of it.”

Now decades on, Leisa, 59, is a renowned glass artist who works from