Born in Auckland, New Zealand, Luke Jacomb is a second-generation glass artist who learned the craft from his father, John Croucher, a pioneer in photosensitive techniques for glass art. Luke grew up at the centre of the Aotearoa New Zealand glass community. Where his father was a well-known glass artist who initiated one of the nation’s first glassblowing cooperatives in the 1970s. Together with fellow glass artist John Leggott, Croucher later established two glass production companies: Giovanni Glass in 1989 and Gaffer Glass in 1995.

Jacomb also studied glassmaking at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York and spent eight years training and working in various studios and workshops in the United States.  Now well established on the international glass art scene, Luke’s work can be found in a number of important public collections including the Ebeltoft Glass Museum in Denmark, The Corning Museum of Glass in New York and the Works Museum in Ohio.

Jacomb’s blown glass work with Pacific Island themes featuring sculpture based on paddles and canoes has received recognition in New Zealand and abroad and has been shown in solo gallery exhibitions and museums.

Since the passing of his father in 2021, Luke has been exploring the history of glass science that led them to their first collaborative exhibition in 2019 – ALEMBICS AND CUCUBITAS: A NEW GLASS VERNACULAR.  In that exhibit Luke delved into the shapes of the apparatus used by the ancient alchemists.  The evolution of that series is seen in the vessels he now refers to as Alembics.