Sick Glass (In Production)
Written & Directed by Tabby Carless-Frost
Research Materials / Treatment
Logline
A poetic 16mm meditation on mudlarked “sick glass,” where iridescent fragments recovered from the Thames collide with the early modern belief that the human body itself could shatter like glass.
Overview
Sick Glass is an experimental 16mm short film exploring fragility through the material history of glass. The title refers both to the archaeological term "sick glass"—glass chemically altered through centuries of burial, producing iridescent surfaces, fractures and crystalline decay—and to the early modern phenomenon of the Glass Delusion, in which people believed their bodies were made of glass and feared they might shatter.
The film brings these histories into conversation through an associative moving-image essay. Rather than illustrating historical research, it uses analogue cinema to inhabit states of deterioration, vulnerability and transformation. Mudlarked glass fragments become witnesses to forgotten lives, while the river itself operates as an archive that continually preserves and erodes its own history.
Background
Recovered from the Thames foreshore through mudlarking, fragments of glass exist between preservation and disappearance. Domestic medicine bottles, trade glass, Victorian refuse and contemporary plastic accumulate within the same sediment, collapsing centuries into a single landscape.
The film is particularly interested in the phenomenon of glass disease, whereby unstable glass slowly deteriorates through chemical reactions with moisture. As alkalis migrate to the surface, the object begins to "weep," producing salts, fractures and iridescent layers that both weaken and beautify the material. Corrosion becomes an image of time itself.
Alongside this material history sits the Glass Delusion, a documented psychological condition that appeared throughout early modern Europe, in which individuals believed their bodies were literally made of glass. These parallel histories ask how material culture shapes imagination, and how fragility migrates between objects, bodies and collective memory.
The project also reflects on the contemporary foreshore, where degraded archaeological glass sits beside fragments of plastic. One disappears through time; the other persists indefinitely. The film asks what these different materials reveal about our relationship to permanence, waste and ecological inheritance.
Visual Approach
Shot entirely on colour 16mm, Sick Glass treats analogue film as both medium and subject. Film grain, scratches, instability and light become conceptually aligned with the weathered surfaces of archaeological glass.
The cinematography privileges duration and close observation. Macro lenses reveal microscopic fractures, iridescence and sediment. Reflections, water, skin and sunlight repeatedly dissolve into one another, creating uncertain relationships between body and object.
Working with Director of Photography Matilda Butler, the film combines observational footage from the Thames foreshore with carefully staged studio sequences and museum collections. Optical experiments using chromatic aberration filters, Fresnel lenses, kaleidoscopic prisms and projected light extend the physical behaviour of glass into the image itself. Rather than documenting objects, the camera attempts to see as glass sees: refracted, unstable and constantly shifting.
Structure & Editing
The film is image-led rather than narrative. Structure will emerge through visual association, allowing recurring motifs—glass, water, skin, mud, plastic, reflected light and the human body—to echo across different locations and historical periods.
Archival material, museum objects, contemporary landscapes and performed gestures will gradually accumulate rather than explain. The edit will privilege rhythm, repetition and resonance over chronology, allowing the viewer to experience fragility as an embodied condition rather than an intellectual argument.
A sparse poetic voiceover will weave historical texts, conservation language and contemporary reflection without fixing a single interpretation.
Sound
Sound will be developed collaboratively with Lucy Ludlow, drawing together location recordings from the Thames foreshore with intimate studio textures.
Water, shifting mud, fragments of glass, footsteps, breath and distant industrial ambience will create an immersive sonic landscape that mirrors the instability of the image. Rather than illustrating what is seen, sound will operate as another archaeological layer, carrying traces of presence, absence and environmental change. Musical elements will remain minimal, allowing silence, resonance and the physical qualities of recorded sound to shape the emotional rhythm of the film.
Materials
The film draws upon:
- mudlarked glass recovered from the Limehouse foreshore
- archaeological glass from the Petrie Museum, UCL
- private mudlarking collections
- historical texts on the Glass Delusion
- conservation literature on glass disease and crizzling
- field recordings made on the Thames foreshore
The project is currently in production with the support of a small grant from the History of Glass Society, enabling access to collections, analogue production and archival research. It is being developed collaboratively with Director of Photography Matilda Butler and sound designer Lucy Ludlow, with completion planned for autumn 2026.