About the Studio Glass Movement:

The American studio glass movement was launched 50 years ago by Harvey Littleton – a Cranbrook trained ceramist and professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Dominick Labino – a glass research scientist at the Johns-Manville plant near Toledo, Ohio.

Harvey Littleton was interested in pushing the artistic boundaries of hot glass, and was greatly influenced by an encounter with the artist Erwin Eisch during the summer of 1962 in Germany. The two of them became long term friends, and Eisch led a parallel art glass movement in Europe.

Dominick Labino, who had the technical expertise, and Littleton (along with a group of graduate students) conducted two experimental glass workshops at the Toledo Museum of Art in March and June of 1962. These seminal workshops are considered the launching point of the american studio glass movement.

Mr. Littleton then went on to start the first university program for glass in the United States at the Universtiy of Wisconsin in Madison. Two of his first students were:

– Marvin Lipofsky, who then started glass programs at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964 and at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland in 1967.
– Dale Chihuly who went on to head the glass department at Rhode Island School of Design.

Interest in glass has mushroomed manyfold since those early years, and today, many glass techniques are taught in schools and workshops around the globe. In addition, art glass has become accepted as a legitimate, museum worthy art form, and a highly collectible medium.