The famous glass makers of a hundred years ago, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Emile Gallé, and René Lalique, for example, all headed factories devoted to the production of glass which they either designed personally or had made under their personal supervision. Studio glass is created by single individuals who, sometimes with a small team of glassblowers, both conceive their works of art and make them.

Studio glass, a relatively young artistic field that has come into its own over the past 30 years, melds a quality of production once possible only in large commercial glass factories with the creative vision and spontaneity of a single-artist studio setting. The movement began in the 1950’s in the studio of Harvey Littleton, a professor of ceramics at the University of Wisconsin. He began to explore glass as a possible medium for individual artists in small studio spaces. In 1962, Littleton and his students built a small glass melting furnace in Toledo, Ohio.

Two glassblowing workshops sponsored by the Toledo Museum of Art were jointly led by long-time Johns-Manville Fiber Glass scientist Dominick Labino and Littleton. The first furnace and the workshops created such enthusiasm that hot glass has become part of the curriculum of more than 100 colleges and universities in North America. The resulting proliferation of forms and objects renewed our perception of glass as an exciting medium for artists and collectors.

The Pilchuck Glass School, headed by Dale Chihuly, has emerged as the major center of American studio glassmaking. Also important are the Rhode Island School of Design, which graduated Chihuly; the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina; Madison, Wisconsin and other Midwest cities where university glassmaking programs took hold in the 1970’s.

(Information found in the Hot Shop Glossary compiled May 2004)