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Challenging boundaries: The history and reception of American studio glass 1960 to 1990

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Challenging boundaries: The history and reception of American studio glass 1960 to 1990

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CHALLENGING BOUNDARIES:
THE HISTORY AND RECEPTION OF AMERICAN
STUDIO GLASS 1960 TO 1990
by
Martha Drexler Lynn
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Art History)
August 2000
Copyright 2000 Martha Drexler Lynn
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UMI Number: 3018102
Copyright 2000 by
Lynn, Martha Drexler
All rights reserved.
___ ®
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
TH E GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA 90007
This dissertation, written by
Martha Drexler Lynn
under the direction of ......... Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of re
quirements for the degree of
D OCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Dean of Graduate Studies
Date ... A ug.us t...7.*.. 2Q Q .Q .
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
I
Chairperson
.....
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ii
CHAPTER PAGE
LIST OF FIGURES iv
ABSTRACT viii
Introduction: American Studio Glass Research Sources and Issues 1
The Problem: Glass as an Art Medium? 1
Chapter Contents 7
The Literature and Sources 11
Part I: The Early History and Characteristics of the American
Studio G lass M ovement to 1975
1 American Studio Glass Terminology 22
From Art Glass to Studio Glass 22
Contemporary + Craft = American Studio Glass 33
Location o f Production: Is it a Factory or a Studio? 52
2 From Factory to Craft Glass 64
Philosophical and Circumstantial Factors that Shaped the
American Studio Glass Movement 64
Glassmaking Before the Proto-Studio Glassmakers 81
American Proto-Studio Glass Pioneers 99
Craftsmen Unite: Asilomar 1957 120
Early Institutional Support: The Founding of The Coming
Museum of Glass and the Glass 1959 Exhibition 126
Technical Issues and Expanding Formal Vocabulary 132
3 Studio Glass Achieves Critical Mass: History, Exhibitions,
Marketing, and Collecting Patterns, 1962 to 1975 135
Ambition and Technique Coalesce 135
The Toledo Workshops 153
Institutionalization: Glassmaking Moves to the Universities 158
Marketing Early American Studio Glass 170
Writing about Studio Glass: 1941 to 1975 182
The Object USA Exhibition of 1969 and the Early Collectors 186
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CHAPTER PAGE
1963: Studio Glass Enters The Museum of Modem Art, New
York 196
1972: “Technique is Cheap” 198
Part n : American Studio Glass Movement: Commodification
and Patronage 1975 to 1990
4 Creating a Market for Studio Glass: Dealers,
Galleries and the Secondary Market, 1975 to 1990 204
Review o f the Marketing of Studio Glass through Craft
Fairs and Multimedia Shops Before 1975 206
The Rise o f Studio Glass Dealers and Dedicated
“Glass-Only” Galleries 218
The Emergence of “Glass-Only” Galleries: Three Examples 227
A Measure of Success: The Escalating Price of Studio Glass 234
Publications, Exhibitions, and Critical Reviews 237
Creation o f the Secondary Market: Dealers Resales
and Public Auctions 243
Studio Glass Periodicals, 1975 to 1990 255
Limited Success: Crossovers from Glass to High Art 257
5 Passion for Glass: Private and Public Patronage,
1975 to 1990 263
Profile o f Studio Glass Collectors, 1975 to 1990 264
Private Collecting o f American Studio Glass 275
Corporate Collections 289
By and For Private Collectors of Studio Glass 291
From Private Collecting to Public Collecting 294
6 Boundaries Challenged: Glass Art 313
GLOSSARY OF TERM S RELATING TO AMERICAN
STUDIO GLASS 318
BIBLIOGRAPHY 321
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IV
LIST OF FIGURES
FIGURE PAGE
1 Cartoon by Allan Chochinov that appeared in
Glass (1996) under the title “dings and fractures.”
This rendering vividly captures the central dilemma
that revolves around glass: has glass moved from being
a craft medium to being art — or does it vacillate
between these two classifications? 3
2 Pomegranate Table Lamp. Green and yellow leaded
glass and bronze table lamp with an acorn finial by
Tiffany Studios, ca. 1900. Auction Catalogue. 26
3 Corn Dolly (United Kingdom, ca. 1980) Cotsen
Collection. 30
4 Three Bottles, ca. 1964, Harvey K. Littleton
(United States, b. 1922). Simple vessels were the
easiest forms to create on the end of a blowpipe.
Collection of the artist. 39
5 Sea Forms, 1981. Dale Chihuly (United States b. 1941)
Blown optical glass with threaded decoration. The Coming
Museum o f Glass. 42
6 Tazza with Openwork Stem, Venice, second half of the
16th century. The bowl o f the tazza is blown and altered in
much the same manner as seen in Fig. 5. The Emesto
Wolf Collection. 44
7 Window Bowl, 1989. Jane Bruce (United Kingdom,
active in the United States and Australia b. 1947).
Gallery announcement. 47
8 Selections of 1930-1953 glassware by Blenko Glass
Company Inc., of Milton, West Virginia featured
“Blenko Handcraft” glasswares. 53
9 Cover o f House and Gardens magazine, September
1944 featuring Blenko Glass Company Inc., of Milton,
West Virginia featured “Blenko Handcraft” glasswares. 82
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FIGURE PAGE
10 Diatretum Vase, 1953. Frederick Carder (1863-1963,
bom United Kingdom, active in the United States after
1903). Cast in a cire perdue mold. The Coming Museum
of Glass.
11 Vessel, ca. 1934. Maurice Marinot (France, 1882-1960).
Blown, and acid etched. The Coming Museum of Glass.
12 Footed Bowl, ca. 1930-40. Jean Sala (1895-1976, bom
in Spain, worked in France). Blown, with hot applications.
The Coming Museum o f Glass.
13 Africa, 1948. Maurice Heaton (United States, 1900-
1999) Kiln-formed with powdered glass and enamels.
The Coming Museum o f Glass.
14 Covered Box, 1948-1949. Michael Higgins (United States,
1908-1999) Fused glass with copper band joints, hinge
and handle, with screen inclusions. The Coming Museum
of Glass.
15 Vessel, 1958-59. Frances Higgins (United States, 1912).
Crushed glass and enamel fused in a mold. The Coming
Museum of Glass.
16 Barbaric Jewels, 1960s. Michael and Frances Higgins
(United States, 1908-1999 and b. 1912).
17 Archangel, 1956. Edris Eckhardt (United States, 1910-
1999) Cast in cire perdue technique. The Coming
Museum of Glass.
18 Photo of 1957 Asilomar Conference exhibition
display area.
19 Vase, ca. 1959. Lucrecia Moyano de Muniz (Argentina,
1902-?), Cristalerias Rigolleau, Buenos Aires.
20 Torso, 1942. Harvey K. Littleton (United States, b.
1922). Slip-cast Vycor Multiform, fused. Fabricated by
Littleton when he had a summer job as a moldmaker for
the Coming Glass Works. Approximately 14 inches high.
91
96
100
106
110
112
114
118
121
130
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FIGURE
vi
PAGE
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Fred A. Bickford, The Coming Museum
o f Glass. 140
21 Vase, circa 1950. Harvey K. Littleton (United States,
b. 1922), Stoneware, 13 l A inches high. The Detroit
Institute of Arts. 144
22 Bess Littleton sitting at her husband’s sales booth
late 1950s. 174
23 Goblet, 1971. This blown goblet is purported to be the
first piece blown at Pilchuck Glass School in 1971.
Anne Gould Hauberg Collection, Seattle, Washington. 192
24 Michael Higgins at Craft Fair. These events strengthened
the craft community by providing an opportunity for
crafts people to congregate and exchange information for
a few days while selling their wares from makeshift stalls. 207
25 Anacortes C raft Fair, July 1971. Here items made during
the current session at Pilchuck Glass School were placed
on tables and sold to bystanders at the local multimedia
Anacortes craft fair. 209
26 American House, January 1946. Items for sale were
presented within a faux-domestic setting that stood proudly
in contrast to the chilly “modernist” presentations that could
be seen around the comer at the Museum of Modem Art.
Craft Horizons 5, No. 12 (February 1946): 33. 213
27 Opening and Sale at the Los Angeles Egg and Eye,
ca. November 1965. Soon this venue would be renamed
the Craft and Folk Art Museum and later Los Angeles
Craft and Folk Art Museum. 216
28 Auction Catalogue Picture o f Buddha, 1988 by Erwin
Eisch (German, 1927) with original auction notes by
Indianapolis Museum of Art decorative arts curator Barry
Shiffman. This work exceeded its estimate and sold for
$6,200 at the April 10, 1989 Christie’s New York
auction to the Marilyn Glick who subsequently donated
it to the Indianapolis Museum o f Art. 250
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FIGURE PAGE
29 Dr. Zarkhov’ s Tower, 1971, Joel Philip Myers
(United States, b. 1934)Blown glass with gold luster,
glued, and gilded metal base (replacement). On October
4, 1989, Christie’s New York auctioned the Martin
and Jean Mensch Collection of Contemporary Glass,
and this work was purchased by the Glicks for
the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
30 Untitled (from the Emergence Series), 1982.
Dominick Labino (United States, 1910-1987).
Clear glass with dichronic veiling and cased crystalline
iridescence. Gift of Eugene and Marilyn Glick.
Indianapolis Museum of Art.
253
284
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viii
CHALLENGING BOUNDARIES: THE HISTORY AND RECEPTION OF THE
AMERICAN STUDIO GLASS MOVEMENT 1960 TO 1990
ABSTRACT
This dissertation addresses the dilemma feeing the American studio glass
movement after World War U: Can art be fashioned out o f glass, or do the
utilitarian associations embedded within the medium preclude it from being
considered an acceptable art medium? This dissertation is the Erst to examine this
question that reveals both the early history o f the movement and the clash o f
ambitions and power that m ark- the relationship between the craft and high art
worlds.
The Introduction frames the question, defines the terms used, and reviews
the sparse literature found in the craft and high art worlds. Part 1 (three chapters)
presents the early history and distinctive characteristics o f the movement to 1975.
Chapter 1 analyzes the evolving terminology (from art glass to studio glass), the
effects o f production practice (factory or studio), and the adoption o f high art
customs. Chapter 2 reviews not only philosophical and circumstantial factors that
shaped studio glass, the state o f glassmaking practice before the proto-studio
glassmakers, the emergence o f pioneering practitioners, the importance o f the
Asilomar conference o f 1957, early institutional support, the founding o f The
Coming Museum o f Glass, the Glass 1959 exhibition, but how each benefited from
the resolution o f technical issues, permitting expanded artistic expression. Chapter
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ix
3 covers the contested history (1955-62), the influential exhibitions, and pre-1975
marketing and collecting patterns. Also recounted is the movement o f glass into
university curricula, the impact o f the Object USA exhibition o f 1969 and early
collector behavior. The tentative movement o f glass into museums and the
challenge o f creating content-driven art conclude Part 1.
Part II (three chapters) moves to the period 1975 to 1990 period and
addresses the increased commodification and expanding patronage for American
studio glass. Chapter 1 outlines market development through craft fairs, multimedia
craft shops, glass-only galleries, dealers, and the secondary market. Escalating
prices attest to the creation o f higher perceived value that resulted from increased
publications, exhibitions, and critical reviews. Chapter 2 examines private and
public (institutional and corporate) collecting. Chapter 3 assesses the degree to
which American studio glass baa challenged the boundaries between craft and
high art.
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Introduction : American Studio Glass Research Sources and Issues
l
Throughout history, people have suspected that glass is magic. How else can
a material be explained that imitates other materials but cannot itself be
imitated? That is five times stronger than steel, yet can be broken by the
human voice? That is evoked by heating sand and ash and then bewitched
into an astonishing array of colors? That is hot liquid and frozen solid,
transparent and opaque, common and exulted? 1
Tina Oldknow
The Problem: Glass as an Art Medium?
In an essay for the Americans in Glass exhibition catalogue written in 1984,
glass artist David Huchthausen bemoaned the fact that the American studio glass
movement was still without critical analysis. Such an absence, he observed,
permitted "the success of a piece [to be] reliant on the material alone, [and
• y j ^
consequently] it will forever remain suspect on a conceptual level." This lack of a
critical perspective continues to haunt glass and perpetuates its exclusion from the
realm of fine art media, an exclusion keenly felt by many glass artists. In contrast to
Huchthausen’s observations, critic Robert Silberman wrote in Art in America one
year later urging that "studio glass artists not be assimilated into the fine arts world
for they would lose their unique traditions." 3 These two observations, one that of a
1 Tina Oldknow, “Babylon, Venice. Damascus. Prague: Travels through the Past of
Glass” Clearly Inspired: Contemporary Glass and its Origins (Tampa, Florida:
Tampa Museum of Art and Pomegrante Communications, 1999), 13.
2 David Huchthausen, "Introduction." in Americans in Glass (Wausau, Wis.: Leigh
Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, 1984), 1-3.
3 Robert Silberman, "Americans in Glass: A Requiem," Art in America 73, No. 3
(March, 1985): 47-53.
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2
practicing artist and the other an art critic, represent the contradictory forces that
have shaped the post-World War II American studio glass movement. These forces
emanate from three camps: factory-produced glass, hobbyist production (craft), and
the American studio glass movement. The three groups, separated by the means o f
production and artistic goals, provided the dynamic backdrop for the 1960 to 1975
period under examination. After 1975 the focus shifted as conflicting goals and
ideals within the American studio glass community produced both ambitious glass
artists (desiring high art status) and conservative ones (preferring a lifestyle rooted
in the crafts). Both of these made glass at odds with the high art world. In time,
however, a limited number of glass artists (supported by dealers and collectors)
gained a measure of acceptance in the vaunted high art community.
Between 1960 and 1990 issues of materiality, the craft roots of the medium,
art status ambitions, inclusion or exclusion from public and private collections,
methods of marketing, and the creation of the historical record reveal the dramatic
journey that American studio glass took as it moved from hobby material to art
medium. This move and the importance how studio glass could be viewed is
successfully captured a 1996 cartoon that appeared in Glass magazine (Fig. 1).
To frame this discussion, a general list of the research sources consulted and
the definitions of terminology specific to American studio glass will be presented, as
well as a statement of the movement’s central and motivating dynamics. This study
will also recount and correct the early history of the studio glass movement from its
“hobby” beginnings in the 1940s to its full formation by the 1970s; trace the
development of the all-important market for this material during the 30 years under
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3
Fig. 1 Cartoon by Allan Chochinov that appeared in Glass (1996) under the title
“dings and fractures.” This rendering vividly captures the central dilemma that
revolves around glass: has glass moved from being a craft medium to being art—or
does it vacillate between these two classifications?
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Dings & Fractures
A
a r t . Cr^-Pt a rts 4 cra-fts
A llan C hochinov
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discussion; illustrate the level o f acceptance of studio glass as a legitimate art form
as evidenced by public and private collecting in the post-1970s period. These last
two areas involve an examination o f contested territory that lies between the high art
world and the studio glass community and reveal the patterns of belief and
manipulation that rule the continued valuing of one artistic expression (in this case
painting and sculpture) over another (studio glass). This discussion will weave
together relevant historical strands, an analysis of shifting marketing practices, the
appearance of studio glass in both public and private collections, and the
phenomenon of crossover artists who move from the glass community to the high art
world and those who move from high art to glass. These central issues are
understood as containing contradictions, complications, and shifting realities that
come together to form the “story” of post-World War II American studio glass.4
A central assumption o f this discussion is that the high art world adheres to a
list of appropriate categories for art-making media that is held up as absolute but is,
in fact, constructed. This “construction” has been most fluid during the post-World
War II period. Indeed, in the past two decades, the history of fine arts has shown a
heartening flexibility in admitting “new media” - when it sees fit.5 Photography and
4 The history of European studio glass, the closest relative to American studio glass,
follows a different pattern of growth. Always artisan-based, but linked to factory
production, European (especially Italian) studio glass production was less lively than
American. Indeed, when studio glass artists began to visit Europe in the late 1970s,
their European counterparts were most impressed by the casual craftsmanship of the
Americans and their intense enthusiasm for the medium.
5 Art historians who usually work with painting and sculpture often insist that glass
is a “new medium.” With its Mesopotamian roots, however, glass is only a new
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6
even craft-based clay have found acceptance, while glass, as will be shown, with its
utilitarian associations and hobby antecedents and despite the ambitions of both the
practitioners and the supporters (dealers and collectors) still hovers uneasily at the
edge. The “fine” or “high art” world resides in our minds as the center o f the art
universe, the desired Eden. For those who seek status within that world and the
higher monetary rewards that accompany admission, it is a paradise. This desire,
however, reflects only part o f the story as related to glass, for while high-profile
members of the glass community (Dale Chihuly, Howard Ben Tre, and others)
operate in both the glass community and the high art world, some in the glass
community wish to remain separate. Still others from the high art world dabble in
glass, using the medium but pointedly maintaining their status within the high art
community.6
Three developments within the period to be examined are of particular note.
First, the American studio glass reached a critical mass between 1960 and 1990 with
minor activity in the pre-1960 period. Second, art ceased to be defined in terms of
the material used, thus allowing glass to attempt parity with the long-accepted
mediums of paint, canvas, and stone. Third, utilitarian forms were assimilated into
the high art world, so that a vessel or chair functioned not always as a container or a
medium to the high art world which has no familiarity with the history o f glass or the
more general topic of decorative arts.
6 It is interesting to note that the term studio glass unlike of Impressionism (or even
to nonart phenomena such as Mesmerism) did not begin as a derogatory epithet nor
was it imposed from the outside; rather, it grew up in a short period of time as the
word studio (describing the method and locale of production) and the word glass
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7
seat, assuming at times “content” greater than their formal language implied. These
manifest changes in the art world made this period unique; moreover they opened the
door for additional media to be considered as appropriate art-making materials.
As a measure of the acceptance awarded to the studio glass, this study will
examine its patterns of collecting and the increasing commodification, and its (hoped
for) acceptance as indicated by its presence within permanent museum collections. It
will include a discussion of the complex relationship of studio glass to the art world
it has sought to join. It is not, however, the purpose of this study to “fit” studio glass
into high art categories or theories; rather it will center the discussion within the
glass world and include the high art world only at those several points o f appropriate
intersection.
Chapter Contents
In general terms, the organization of the study will be as follows. The work is
presented in two parts with three chapters each. Part 1 will address the early history
and characteristics of the American studio glass movement from the early
nineteenth-century until 1975, covering the research sources and issues framing the
discussion and the definitions of the key terms and concepts. Also the philosophical
and circumstantial factors that led to the emergence of studio glass will be reviewed.
The history o f the movement will be corrected and the early history of will be
reframed within the light of later developments exhibitions, marketing and collecting
(describing the medium and, as will be shown, the forming technology) were placed
side-by-side by practitioners, early chroniclers, and supporters.
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8
up to 1975. Part 2 of this study will shift the emphasis to understanding the patterns
o f patronage and commodification from 1975 to 1990. The creation of the market for
studio glass will be reviewed, the collecting activity, both public and private and its
effect on the acceptance of the movement as manifest in the glass artists who have
become accepted by the high art world.
Chapter 1 o f part 1, will present the definitions and terms that are necessary
to discussing and understand the roots of studio glass. American contemporary
studio glass is located w ithin the long continuum o f object production that runs from
fo lk art through craft and into decorative arts, design, factory production and finally
merges into high art. 7 Clear definitions with their nuances and practical implications
made evident are necessary to accessing the development of the marketing apparatus,
the expanding artist expectations and the collector (public and private) behavior.
Each term is important as it reveals aspects of meaning and thereby impacts the
7 "High" art for the purposes of this study is defined as any art executed in the
sanctified artistic media of painting on canvas (or wood) and sculpturing in stone
(granite, marble, etc.). Note that the emphasis is on the medium coupled with the
intent of the artist -having one without the other does not suffice. Consequently,
painting-on-velvet or sculptures-carved-in-ice are considered low art. “High art” is
the art privileged by urban centers and the only type of art examined on a regular
basis by the art historical community. Art critics tend to review only items made in
the sanctified media and this has had a profound effect on studio glass. This
distinction is seen not only in the world of formal art history but is present in other
intellectual disciplines. Larry Gross in his editorial introduction to On the Margins o f
the Art World (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995) states that the fine arts are painting,
sculpture, and architecture. He then proceeds to write that they are “too broad — the
popular or low arts — or too utilitarian, such as crafts” (p. 1) As a scholar of
communications at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of
Pennsylvania, it is perhaps too much to ask him to understand the imprecise brush he
wields, but this makes it all the more evident that the discussion of studio crafts
needs to receive wider exposure.
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history and reception of studio glass both as a craft medium and as a medium with
high art pretensions.
Chapter 2 o f Part 1 will review the philosophical and circumstantial factors
that shaped the American studio glass movement. Elements both from the glass
world and the larger society contributed to the emergence of glass at this post world
war II period and impacted the formation of the movement. The underlying tensions
between art and craft, and high art and studio art, have their roots in the Industrial
Revolution.8 The history of this antagonism will not form part o f this dissertation. Its
impact, however, will be felt throughout this work. By the early years o f studio glass,
making glass by hand was an anachronistic activity evoking the romance o f the
“hand versus the machine.” 9 With greatly expanded production capabilities
developed after World War II, there was no practical reason for hand production.1 0 It
will be shown, however, that there were compelling philosophical, aesthetic, status,
and lifestyle reasons for continued hand production and that these were the driving
forces behind the growth o f the American studio glass movement.
8 In antiquity there was no distinction between “art” and “craft” Both the Greek
techne and Latin ars meant both art and craft. The distinction emerged later as each
art medium jockeyed for status in later eras.
9 Arthur J. Pulos American Design Ethic: A History o f Industrial Design to 1940
(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1986) Pulos notes that “handmade” became
synonymous with “shoddy” in the nineteenth century as the proponents of
manufacturing sought to shift allegiance to mass-produced wares.
1 0 In the nineteenth century William Morris had tried to return to hand production,
but he found that it was not practical. In the end he exhorted designers to use the
machine, but with care and sensitivity. See Peter Shansky, Redesigning the World:
William Morris, the 1880s, and Arts and Crafts (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1985).
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10
Chapter 3 o f Part 1, will chronicle the Toledo Workshops o f March and
June 1962 with specific attention to the mythology that later emerged from it that
fixed the alleged “date” o f the beginning as the American studio glass movement.
This is a point o f major contention within the field. This study will show that through
the use o f language and control over the definition o f studio glass, the group
connected to Toledo and the people who attended the workshop(s) sought to create a
separate and more “art like” set o f practices within the glass community with the
intention o f joining the select high art world. These acts set in motion the ambition
found within the movement and placed glass in a unique position among the other
craft communities.
Part 2 (Chapters 1 and 2) will address issues of commodification and
acceptance by examining the key indicator o f the acceptance: the expansion of
public and private collecting. Chapter 1 looks at the commodification of glass
through the agency of the dealers and the expanding audience for the medium.
Chapter 2 will explore patterns of private and public collecting. These activities
resulted from many factors including the impact o f the materiality o f glass as an
aesthetic object, its function as a marker of social status, and even in one case, as a
prescription for a troubled marriage. Each collecting activity carries beneath it a
unique and often private history. The marketing strategies used by glass artists (and
their dealers) will also be assessed. Cost, as part o f valuation, reveals much about the
relative position o f a given work or class of works. The expansion o f the
marketplace, both as relevant to all studio media and to glass as it differentiated itself
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11
from other craft-based works, will illustrate the movement of glass from a hobby
material to an art medium.
The Literature and Sources
Little had been written about American studio glass from a scholarly
perspective. When reviewing an (purported) art medium it is expected that certain
categories of literature exist - periodicals (journals and magazines), histories of the
medium’s development, catalogue raisonnes, exhibitions catalogues, technical books,
and critical analysis. While some categories exist often they have one example.
Consequently, There are no catalogue raisonnes, one journal, few histories and
magazines, many technical books and a good number of exhibition catalogues.
For the researcher, the most desired form of literature is the contemporaneous
periodical, but there are no periodicals that span the period under examination and
focus exclusively on glass as a separate medium. Magazines devoted solely to studio
glass begin in the 1970s with a series of short-lived publications that quietly faded.
The most influential magazine for glass and the craft media was the general craft
magazine Craft Horizons, founded in 1944 and later renamed American Craft
inl979.n Intended as a guide for the hobbyist with specific information about “how
1 1 The title change signaled that the craft movement in general had an American
presence within the worldwide craft community. It is ironic that the name change
coincided with the period when craft became less identified with nationalities as it
became internationalized through conferences and educational exchanges between
artists. This cross-pollination among fledgling studio groups around the world is a
key factor in the coalescing of the American movement and will be part of the
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12
to make handicrafts,” its audience paralleled that served by American Artists of
the same period, which provided tips on how to execute watercolors and render
figurative images.1 2 Unlike other periodicals that offered criticism o f painting and
sculpture and catered to collectors, enthusiasts, and makers, Craft Horizons was
geared toward the amateur hobbyists who made crafts in their leisure time. This
helped to embed the hobbyist sensibility within craftmaking, tainting it as
dilettantish. Interestingly, this “how to” approach which was successful with clay
and textiles (and painting seen with American Artists), was problematic for glass as
the forming of glass required specialized tools that at the time resided only within the
distant factory world. Without practitioners to write about these developed a three-
history to be told later. In 1998 American Craft redesigned its cover graphics with
“American” diminished to a third of the size o f the typeface used for “craft.” The
publication now seems poised to recognize that contemporary world craft is its
mission.
1 2 American Artist was published in New York and encouraged the adoption o f art
activities as a leisure time experience. Published by Watson-Guptill Publications,
Whitney Library of Design, which also produces Architectural Forum, Gift and
Table Ware Reporter, Industrial Design, and Interiors, it never entered the high art
discourse. Indeed it represents the hobby impulse that appeared during the 1930s. As
noted in Steven M. Gelber’s article, “A Job You Can’t Lose and Hobbies in the
Great Depression” Journal o f Social History 24, No. 4 (winter 1991) 741-766
hobbies were promoted. The other aspect of the hobby as envisioned in the 1930s
was its therapeutic nature — both for society and for the individual (p. 746.) Hobbies
taught discipline, instilled focused behavior and “redeem[ed] idleness” (p. 747.)
“The word ‘hobby’ became a strategic term used less to be descriptive than to carry
weight of authoritative approval when applied to individual activities. In other words
the term ‘hobby’ as used in the Thirties was more an ideological construct crafted to
distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ pastimes, than the natural category of leisure
activity.” This quality of good versus bad is also seen in the craft community, where
practitioners view themselves as participating in a more righteous activity than do
others. See Rose Slivka, The Eloquent Object: The Evolution o f American Art in
Craft Media Since 1945 (Seattle: Washington University Press, 1987).
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13
to-one relationship between the articles about other craft media and those focused
on studio glass.
Early articles simply noted developments in American glassmaking, usually
in factual, unattributed one- and two-page stories. This style of reportage was typical
of the period and again reveals the hobbyist roots of the field. But the significance of
these articles lay in their reporting of glass fabrication that was occurring outside the
factory setting. This raised the visibility of studio glassmakers. Typical of this early
writing was an article written in 1955 by Earl McCutchen, an instructor at the
University o f Georgia, that discussed the fusing of glass scraps in a kiln.1 3 This was
followed by Dido Smith’s report o f 1956 on Edris Eckhardt's experiments with
re-creating Roman gold glass. All o f these pieces gave hints about glass technology
but were based on speculation about ancient techniques, as opposed to actual
knowledge. In a pattern that would be repeated, exhibition news such as a notice of
Harvey Littleton’s one-man show at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York
in 1964, also stirred up interest. But technical fare, like the two-part series on ancient
glass forming by the chemist Frederick Schuler in 1960 was more common.1 4 These
written records are useful in tracking awareness of the early studio glass activities
but, as noted, they offer no critical or theoretical insight.
Three short-lived publications devoted to studio glass provide alternative
perspectives. In 1973 Glass Arts Magazine (renamed Glass in 1977) became the first
1 3 See Earl McCutchen, “Glass Molding: Experimenting on a Low Budget, Craft Horizons 15, No.
3(May/June 1955): 38-50; Dido Smith,’’Gold Glass: An Ancient Technique Rediscovered,” Craft
Horizons 16, No. 6, (December 1956:12-15.
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14
American periodical devoted exclusively to studio glass. The modest bimonthly
offered a comprehensive range of technical information and promoted
communication among glass artists and provides evidence of the close relationships
between teachers and practitioners and the primary concern with technique that
marked the early years. By 1983 the periodical suspended publication. Glass Studio
first appeared in 1978, and was published by the New York Experimental Glass
Workshop (later named UrbanGlass). continued intermittently after 1983. It was
devoted to studio production and the technical accomplishments of glass to date. Due
to the lack of financial viability, the Created in 1980, it mirrored the increasing art
ambitions of the field and focused on aesthetic issues. As the publication arm of an
urban glass studio that offered magazine sputtered to an end a few years later. A
third periodical New Work magazine, classes to professionals glassmakers, it offers a
record of the discourse addressing the tensions between the high art world and glass
that are the themes of this study.
One final periodical that was important to the movement was the quarterly,
bilingual Neues Glas. Published in Germany and distributed by German Languages
Publications o f New Jersey, it is available only by subscription. Most articles are
translated into (awkward) English, but they offer a useful way to compare the work
of American glass artists with that produced by Europeans who have a long history
of studio glass. During the 1980s the magazine was edited by Dr. Helmut Ricke, a
noted German glass scholar and curator at the Dusseldorf Museum, who lent his
1 4 See Frederick Schuler, “Ancient Glassmaking Techniques,” Craft Horizons 20, No. 2
(March/April, 1960): 33-37; and “Ancient Glass Blowing,” Craft Horizons 20, No. 6
(November/December 1960): 38-41.
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15
academic standards to it. Neues Glas is read by artists and collectors alike (public,
semi-public, and private) and offers a reasoned perspective that will help to balance
the less sophisticated writing found in the American studio community.
Not surprisingly for such a young movement, most writing on American
studio glass consisted of biographical, descriptive, and technical reportage rather
than analysis. Eventually a debate arose as to whether a new set of criteria, as well as
a methodology, specific to the material needed to be invented or whether existing
critical standards could be applied. Contributing lack of analysis was the reluctance
o f writers to make judgments about the close-knit glassmaking community, for
adherents tended to mistake aesthetic criticism for personal attack.
The American studio glass movement does boast one journal devoted to it.
Published by the Glass Art Society (G.A.S.) and originally called the Gloss Art
Society Newsletter, (renamed Glass Art Society Journal in 1979), the Journal first
appeared in 1976 as a summary o f the proceedings o f Glass Art Society’s annual
conference. The Glass Art Society is an artist-run group that promotes the exchange
of information, relating to studio glass, aesthetics, and technical issues, among recent
graduates, mature glass artists, teachers, and collectors. Early issues focused on the
sharing of technical information and the promotion of educational programs. Since
the late 1970s, the content of the Journal (and the conferences it documents) has
moved steadily toward discussions about the interrelationships and tensions that exist
among art, craft, and design. Written by the practitioners, curators, and teachers for
themselves, this publication is a key resource for this study.
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Another source o f written material relating to American studio glass relates
to the activity of collectors. An important collector’s organization is the Art Alliance
for Contemporary Glass and its newsletter is Glass Focus. First appearing in
February 1987, near the end of the period under review, the newsletter is written and
edited by Beverly M. Copeland from her home in Morton Grove, Illinois. It consists
of eighteen to twenty pages per issue with extensive gallery listings. It was initially
available by subscription only for $6 per year, but now is a benefit o f membership in
the Art Alliance. The newsletter was founded to provide information (no pictures) to
collectors, and was originally named The North Shore Studio Glass Newsletter, but it
affiliated with the Alliance within a few months of its first issue, however, it changed
its name. Glass Focus is produced as a service for members and is given free of
charge to all museum curatorial staff who indicate an interest in adding
contemporary glass to their collections. The ambitiously named group itself is
comprised of four “chapters:” the Tri-state area (New Jersey, New York, and
Pennsylvania), the Florida group, the Ohio group, and the Los Angeles group. Each
chapter is located near thriving studio glass galleries. In the case of Florida and Ohio
the Habatat Galleries are at hand and the Tri-state chapter is near Heller Gallery in
Chelsea, New York City as well as Synderman. Philadelphia.
The Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass also provides financial support for
museum exhibition brochures and eventually came to underwrite the biannual
GLASS WEEKEND in the glass factory town of Millville, New Jersey, where
galleries, collectors, and artists come together for a three-day conference to meet the
artists, see them work, and buy artworks from the big name glass galleries. This
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17
opportunity to bring the three components of the glass community together shows
a sophisticated understanding of the relationship among the marketplace, collectors
(public and private) and the artists. Articles focus on collectors and established artists
(those most likely to be in Art Alliance collections) and include a gallery listing
service for a fee. Three factors are salient: first, that the glass collecting community
in Ohio and Chicago were the first to organize; second, the Art Alliance defined
themselves as an “art” society; third, only established artists are featured. For the
purposes o f this study, this organization and its publication will provide reliable,
verbatim interviews with collectors and artists and permits the tracking of the self-
promoting tendencies resident within the glass collecting community.
Because glassmakers defined themselves by their forming methodology (i.e.,
hot glass, cast glass, etc.), technical books about the making of glass are an important
genre. They also reveal the shifting interest in forming methodology from blown
glass to warm and finally to cold glasswork. These books have been necessary
because technical knowledge resided only in the factory or had been lost. The
migration o f factory-based process and the revival of “lost” techniques by studio
glass artists reveal aspects of the struggle to make glass capable of artistic expression
when separated from the factory.
The tension between commercial producers and hobbyist during the 1940s
and 1950s is clear from reading of the few books that remain in print. They reveal
many of the difficulties that continue to challenge studio glass. Coming glass
designer Sydney Waugh’s The Art o f Glass Making (1947) presents glassmaking
using laymen’s terms; it is illustrated with photographs and filled with declarations
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that help to perpetuate the fiction that glass could only be made in large factories.
Kay Kinney’s Glass Craft: Designing, Forming, Decorating (1962) was directed at
the glass “hobbyist” (the same audience that subscribed to Craft Horizons) and
provided a contrasting point of view. It offered simple instructions on making objects
from sheet glass heated in a kiln.1 5 The same year Ada Polak wrote the slender but
still reputable Modem Glass as an overview of the history of glass.1 6 On the subject
of glassblowing only industrial manuals were available, among them: Samuel R.
Schoies's reference for engineers and technologists, Handbook o f the Glass Industry
(1941); Fay Tooley's Handbook o f Glass Manufacture (1953); Milton K. Berlyez
The Encyclopedia o f Working with Glass (New York: Dobbs Ferry, N. Y. Oceana
Publications, 1968); and Potly Rothenberg's The Complete Book o f Creative Glass
Art (New York: Crown, 1974). These book are useful to the scholar in understanding
the pervasive interest in solving technical issues before studio glass could mature
into addressing concerns about content.
Next came books that positioned glass as an art medium suitable for
collecting. Ray and Lee Grover’s Contemporary Art Glass (1975) linked American
studio glass to the larger international studio movement, thereby enhancing its
prestige. 1 7 The book also served as a guide for early collectors by selecting and
1 5 Kay Kinney, Glass Craft: Designing, Forming, Decorating (Philadelphia: Clinton
Company, 1962).
1 6 Ada Polak Modem Glass (New York: Thomas Yoseloff Publisher, 1962).
1 7 See Ray and Lee Grover Contemporary Art Glass (New York: Crown, 1975).
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listing ninety-eight artists as “contemporary art glass” makers. It reveals high
attrition rate effecting the artists that marked the movement’s second decade.
In the 1980s, survey books appeared that sought to tell the story of glass.
Adopting a neutral tone, these books accomplished more with their impressive
photography than their uncritical texts. Examples that will be consulted are Susanne
K. Frantz's Contemporary Glass: A World Survey from the Coming Museum o f
Glass and Dan Klein's Glass: A Contemporary Art. The Frantz book is richly
detailed and accurate; the Klein book is journalistic and troubled by factual errors.
Neither one applies a consistent methodology; both opting instead to present
transparent histories.1 8 These will be consulted for facts and some general
assessments.
Books by authored by active glass artists is a significant category of glass
literature. They were written to promote the field, disseminate technical knowledge,
and argue for a place for glass within the high art pantheon. As this is a central
concern of this dissertation, these book are primary source material. The two most
1 8 Susanne K. Frantz, Contemporary Glass: A World Survey from the Coming
Museum o f Glass (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989), and Dan Klein, Glass: A
Contemporary Art (New York: Rizzoli, 1989). Both Frantz’s and Klein’s books
recount the “story” of glass in a linear manner without investigation of contextual
issues relating to the effect cultural, sociological, or economic forces had on the
formation of the studio glass movement. Their work is typical o f any field before a
critical discourse had developed to order the rhetoric necessary for analysis. Because
this discourse did not exist glass has found itself placed within the preexisting
cognitive fields, i.e. art history, that ask the wrong questions. These fields are
currently dominated by an understanding that favors noncraft mediums for art
production, i.e. “high art.” See Neil Flax’s “Fiction Wars of Art.” Representations,
No. 7 (Summer 1984): 1-3, for an initial statement o f this problem.
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influential examples are by Littleton and Dominick Labino. Narrative in style, each
presents individual visions for the future of studio glass.
Labino’s Visual Art in Glass (1968) surveyed the history of glass for the
layman with only one chapter devoted to "The Artist and Glass." Featuring pictures
from Diderot, Labino recounts history, reviews the growth of technology, and
devotes only one chapter to developments in twentieth-century American glass. The
Toledo Workshops are covered in a four-page epilogue. Littleton’s Glassblowing: A
Search fo r Form (1971) framed the discussion within the limited technology of
glassblowing. The book offered technical information about the nature of glass,
tools, techniques, and safety, supported by photographs. In Littleton’s preface he
boldly states that his “book is both a guide and a revivalist manifesto” and proceeds
to urge the reader to explore the artistic potential of glass made within a studio
setting.1 9 This stance positioned Littleton’s book to become a primary text for studio
glassblowing for the next decade, making it a key document for this study. 2 0
The studio glass movement offers a chance to assess the power structure of
the high art world and the protective boundaries between it and the rest of art
production. The late twentieth century was a time when this hegemony was
1 9 Dominick Labino, Visual Art in Glass (Dubuque, Iowa: William C . Brown, 1968);
Harvey Littleton, Glassblowing: A Search fo r Form (New York: Van Nostrand,
Reinhold, 1971), 6.
2 0 Dr. Donald B. Kuspit, contributing editor to Art Forum, Sculpture, and New
Examiner and editor of Art Criticism, wrote a weighty essay in Chihuly (New York:
Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, 1997), which assesses the artist within the context
of the high art world. The appearance of this volume marks a maturation in the field
and seeks to further establish glass as an art medium. This volume will be alluded to,
but it falls outside of the period under consideration.
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challenged making the recounting of the history and acceptance o f the studio glass
pertinent to art history. Perhaps at the end o f this study it can be determined whether
“whether the Studio Movement is an answer or merely a cul-de-sac.”2 1
2 1 R. Craig Miller, “Betwixt and Between: Contemporary Glass in American Art Museums,"Glass
Art Society Journal (1991): 31.
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Part 1 : The Early History and Characteristics of the American Studio Glass
Movement to 1975
Chapter 1: American Studio Glass Terminology
From Art Glass to Studio Glass
The terms necessary to discussing history and acceptance of American studio
glass need to defined. As with all terminology specific to a discrete group, each term
used here became shaded with implications and judgments that are clearly
understood within the glass community but are obscure to the outsider. Also each
successive generation modified the nomenclature to suit its goals. By plotting these
changes over time, a fuller understanding o f the conflicted (and manipulated) history
of studio glass can be seen.
The terms can be separated into three classes: those used to define the object
produced, those used to denote or describe the makers, and descriptors of
methodology and production locales. Among these run fault lines-caused by
definitional shifts and value judgments which occurred as the medium progressed
from hobby to art. At the beginning of the period under discussion, the first tensions
appear, those between the new of studio glass and previous glass production. To
highlight this key dynamic of the movement, examples drawn from the period just
prior to the emergence of the American studio glass will be cited.
The term for late nineteenth-century glass objets d 'art was “art glass,”
referring to utility-linked objects made in factories by designers and manufacturers,
fashioned in large quantities out of high-quality “art” material for display in middle-
and upper-class homes. The Illustrated Dictionary o f Glass defines “Art glass” as
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[a] general term applied to glassware made for ornamental rather than
utilitarian purposes, with primary regard to the quality o f the metal and the
artistic nature o f the form and decoration. It was used in connection with
modem glassware from c. 1850. 1
Such art glass, produced for the home with its presumed rarity and its beauty
established (and intentionally trumpeted), elevated the status and confirmed the taste
of its owners. In the United States, Louis Comfort Tiffany, in his several production
entities, manufactured America’s most prestigious “art glass” during the last years of
the nineteenth century and into the beginning of the twentieth. By consciously
pairing the word art to glass, he (and other makers) increased the cachet of their
products by implying art-level aesthetics and virtuoso technical achievement. As this
period receded into history, the term, through its customary use by scholars, curators
and collectors, became firmly attached to this specific type of glass and time.
The work of earlier, however, eras is not always valued by the next
generation, and by the mid-twentieth century the studio glassmakers expressed their
disdain for this historical material by choosing not to call their work “art glass.”
Ironically, the use of this term would seem logical as it did link their ambition (to
make “art”) and their chosen medium (glass) in an efficient and vivid phrase. But it
would be another 30 years before glass artists returned to a variant, choosing to
fashion themselves as makers of “glass art.” This designation, however, shifts the
emphasis to art with “glass” as a descriptor, subtly moving the medium into a
1 Howard Newman, An Illustrated Dictionary o f Glass (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1977), 27. For a detailed discussion see Wendy Kaplan, "The Art that is
Life The Arts and Crafts Movement in America, 1875-1920 (Boston: Museum of
Fine Arts, 1987), 152-53, 331 (entries on Tiffany).
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24
secondary position relative to the elevated activity o f artmaking. This shift reveals
the ambition of the studio glassmakers to distance themselves from the earlier,
factory-related works of “art glass,” and to position themselves in proximity to the
high arts.
Two other nineteenth-century terms used in conjunction with studio glass are
relevant to the discourse today. They are applied art and decorative arts. These
terms refer to items made of clay, glass, metal, and wood that have utilitarian forms
(or reference utility) with appended decorative passages.2 The term applied arts
denotes an utilitarian object that has “art” (aesthetic elements) added to the basic
functional form as a way of softening or obscuring (crude) functionality. In
contemporary usage, the term applied suggests decoration ill-suited to the forms it
adorns. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the term applied arts fell into
disfavor as the field split into two, with the machine-made items becoming known as
“production” (design) and individually crafted works labeled “craft” and later
“studio crafts.” 3
Susanne K. Frantz, retired curator of twentieth-century glass at the Coming
Museum of Glass prefers the term “decorative arts” over “craft.” She also
distinguishes between art that is functional and art that is decorative. A work that is
just decorative cannot qualify as art. See “What Ever Happened to the Decorative
Arts,” Glass Art Society Journal (1987): 29.
3 The nominative usage of the term design will not be defined here at length, as it
had, by the time period under examination, become a separate concern and
discipline, exclusively focused on factory production. The word only function within
the studio world as a verb, which indicates as it does in many other fields, the
activity of formal composition.
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The term decorative arts implies skill in expression and execution, paired
with a high level of aesthetic sensitivity, which produces masterpieces. This
“masterpiece” sensibility is seen in the Pomegranate Lamp, ca. 1900, by Louis
Comfort Tiffany (Fig. 2). Here, the utilitarian lampshade is decorated with a
pomegranate motif that dictates the general form and adds visual interest and drama.
The object’s utility is not affected by this design, but its decorative power is
enhanced, as is its usefulness as a marker of high status. Skilled execution, relative
uniqueness, and a named maker move it over into the masterpiece category. A more
nuanced meaning o f decorative arts, refers to its function as a decoration for a
domestic interior and as a status symbol.4 Thus, this Tiffany lamp stands for a
4 The effect of domestic context on decorative arts, and subsequently the production
of the studio movement will be addressed in a later chapter, as the works move from
appendages to interiors to autonomous artworks. As has been noted the issue of
domestic space and women reveals itself in the “placeness” of craft (see Douglas
Crimps’ terminology). This association works against glass as it contrasts with the
modernist notion of “placelessness,” an assumed part of successful modem painting
and sculpture. Craft has been located in the home, produced as a leisure activity
separate from work, ever since production of both domestic and business wares,
outside the home was made possible by the advent of the machine. By locating craft
in the domestic realm, it is dismissed as a serious art medium. In the case of glass,
however, it is decidedly outside of the domestic sphere for during the first part of the
time under discussion, it could only be produced in a factory. When glass is linked to
craft, the historical connotation o f a female domestic activity effects its valuation.
See Douglas Crimp, On the M useum’ s Ruins (Cambridge : The MIT Press, 1993),
17, and Christopher Reed, ed. Not at Home: The Suppression o f Domesticity in
Modem Art and Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996). Another shift
occurred which reversed the value o f homemade and handmade. In the nineteenth
century, handmade meant “amateur,” which translates to shoddy and lesser. The
studio movement discussed here turned this around to its current position. See
Author J. Pulos, American Design Ethic: A History o f Industrial Design to 1940
(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1986); Susanne K. Frantz, “This is Not a Minor Art:
Contemporary Glass and Traditons of Art History,” Glass Art Society Journal (1985-
6): 7- 11; and Robert Silverman, “Domesticity and Beyond: Irve Dell, Christie
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Fig. 2. Pomegranate Table Lamp. Green and yellow leaded glass and bronze table
lamp with an acorn finial by Tiffany Studios, ca. 1900. Auction Catalogue.
Hawkins, and the Place of Craft,” American Craft 57, No.4 (August/September
1997): 48-53, and 64.
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constellation o f meanings. Decorative arts today continues to carry all the
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connotations o f connoisseurship, rarity, and masterpiece.5 It is
ironic that Western art historical discourse has determined that anything referred to
as “decorative” or having intrinsic beauty is o f lesser worth and incapable of
expressing content — a necessary component of high art. This study challenges that
notion, and it will demonstrate how American studio glass sought to refute this
assumption.
The original manifestation of craft in the United States is what is now termed
traditional craft.6 It is distinguished from applied arts or decorative arts by its rural
associations and the embodiment of an untutored and naive sensibility. Traditional
crafts are fabricated by (usually anonymous) master-trained, rural makers who
learned their trade through an apprenticeship system that passed empirical
5 This is in contrast to the nineteenth-century term “minor arts” which assumes that
anything other than the high arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture were
“minor” in relationship to high art. Contemporary glass scholar Susanne K. Frantz
and ceramics scholar Garth Clark agree that classification of works made in craft
media as art is determined by the intention o f the artist. If the artist is not successful,
then it won’t be art, just as bad painting is not admitted to the temple of art. See
Susanne K. Frantz, “This Is Not a Minor Art: Contemporary Glass and Traditons of
Art History,” Glass Art Society Journal, (1985-86): 7, and conversations with
ceramics scholar Garth Clark since 1985.
6 The term traditional crafts is here distinguished from folk art only by custom of
language. Traditional crafts imply a knowledge of previous technologies; folk art
carries the notion of an untutored, naive sensibility. Both may be anonymous.
Traditional craft makers are trained, but in a way that teaches them to make an
established range of forms from time-honored materials, in the same manner over
decades of time. In this assessment concurs with Michael Owen Jones who makes
similar distinctions in his book of 1987 Exploring Folk Art: Twenty Years o f Thought
on Craft, Work, and Aesthetics (Ann Arbor: U.M.I. Research Press, 1987),
specifically in “Violations of Standards of Excellence and Preference in Utilitarian
Art,” 13-39.
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29
knowledge about forming and materials from one craftsman to the next in a
generational stream.7 Producing almost identical objects through repetitious methods
of fabrication, these craftsmen neither sought nor prized artistic or technical
innovation and often made items that were anachronistic in form and meaning.8 The
Com Dolly, 1980, (Fig. 3) is an example o f this type of work. George Kubler noted
this distinction when he studied certain classes of indigenous arts in Africa. He
sought to capture what separates this from the realm of high art in The Shape o f
Time: Remarks on the History o f Things (1962). He states that “a great difference
separates traditional craft education from the work of artistic invention. The former
requires only repetitious actions, but the latter depends upon departures from all
routine.” 9 This fundamental aspect also distinguishes traditional craft from that
made by studio craftsmen who, like fine artists, desire personal expression and
communication of content, achieved with the aid of technical innovation and skill. A
further distinctive aspect of traditional craft (or “folk art”) is that folk artists market
their works to those in close proximity and, as a rule, do not seek recognition
7 The anonymity of the rural artisan contrasts with the “author-based” high arts and
reflects issues relating to the importance of the individual and authorship. Studio
glass- makers from the beginning signed and often dated their work, thereby linking
their practice to high art activity.
8 Joel Samuel Yudken, The Viability o f Craft in Advanced Industrial Society: Case
Study o f the Contemporary Crafts Movement in the United States. (Ph.D. Diss.
Stanford University, 1987), Vol. 1, 136-178.
9 George Kubler, The Shape o f Time: Remarks on the History o f Things (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 15.
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Fig. 3. Corn Dolly (United Kingdom, ca. 1980) Cotsen Collection.
\
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end of the craft spectrum with the studio craftsman at the opposite end. 1 0 As with
all classifications, however, there are practitioners who do not conform in all aspects,
i.e., traditional craftsmen who are located adjacent to urban centers, but continue to
market their works through one-to-one associations. 1 1 The studio glass community
began in this way, but, as will be shown, later consciously adopted the urban high art
strategies for marketing their wares.
In the twentieth century, another characteristic that links traditional craft to
studio work is that on an economic level, traditional craftsmen make objects not
essential to the marketplace or contemporary culture, for these already exist in
abundance from commercial sources. Markets exist for both because while a factory-
made glass goblet functions adequately, the hand blown one pleases the eye, hand,
and soul and provides a culturally meaningful statement. Additionally, owning studio
work signifies an appreciation for craft and testifies to a sophisticated aesthetic
sensibility. This cultural distinction, initially derived from traditional crafts, remains
embedded within the American studio glass sensibility and affects its valuation and
place with the art community.1 2
1 0 Howard Becker states that there are two types of craftsmen: the craftsmen and the
artist-craftsman. He maintains that “The two types not only carry on the craft in
distinctive ways, but also constitute distinct groups of people.” See Art Worlds
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 276. This is a distinction that studio
glass sought to obviate.
1 1 Joel Samuel Yudken, Op. Cit., Vol. 2,452-467.
1 2 Both Bernard Kester, noted textile expert and former dean of the University of
California, Los Angeles, School o f Art, and Edith Wylie, founder and director of the
Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles, represent this point of view. Kester
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Contemporary + Craft = American Studio Glass
If it’s not magic - it’s merchandise.
Christopher Wilmarth 1 3
The word craft used as both a noun and an adjective, has negatively impacted
the studio movement vis-a-vis the high art world since the movement’s inception. In
the discourse about crafts (whether from within the craft world or from outside), the
term refers to handmade, utility-linked objects, made of clay, fiber, glass, metal, or
wood, either alone or in any combination. Originally, it denoted the conservative end
of the craft movement, but in current usage it implies “contemporary” and as such
has supplanted the term decorative arts within the museum world. It has not done so
within academe. 1 4 Craft in the university (specifically in cultural studies and
anthropology) means items made by native peoples in rural settings. The implication
is that “crafts” are non-art and subject only to the rules that govern material culture.1 5
never desired to have his work considered under the rubric of high art. When Wylie
founded her museum her goal was to re-involve herself with objects and figuration in
order to stand in opposition to the trend toward abstraction that prevailed at that time.
Conversations with Kester 1990-1994 and with Wylie 1996-97.
1 3 Artist Christopher Wilmarth quoted in “Obituary,” Glass Art Society Journal
(1988): 64.
1 4 There are two new institutions devoted to the issues of crafts and studio work.
They are the Mint Museum of Craft + Design which just opened a new facility in
Charlotte, North Carolina and the Center for Craft Creativity and Design located in
Asheville, North Carolina. Both institutions are located near traditional craft centers,
with Penland and Black Mountain being located just outside Asheville. With these
“craft” roots, the term decorative arts, with its urban and academic connections, was
never a possibility.
1 5 For a schematic o f how craft moves from a material culture connotation to an art
association see A. J. Greimas “Semiotic Square” as modified in James Clifford’s
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34
Craft in the art historical discourse still retains the association o f kitsch that
attached after Clement Greenberg’s essay “Avant-Garde and Kitsch (1939).” 1 6
Finally, at its most rudimentary level, craft means a skill with the connotation of
power or strength derived from its Saxon roots. In this context the term translates
into a high level of ability in manipulating the chosen art material into a desired
form.1 7 Today crafts is teamed with contemporary to indicate works that have high
skill and artistic intent.
The literature about the nature of crafts and their relationship to the machine
is extensive and, while this relationship is not the subject of this study, an
understanding of its elements insofar as they continue to affect contemporary crafts
(the classification that studio glass most readily falls under) is essential. Kenneth R.
Trapp, curator-in-charge at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institute, Washington,
D.C., states that craft (studio glass) is “always concerned with materials, craft
always makes reference to traditions, craft involves a constant play with function,
[and] craft makes constant reference to the human body [italics original].” 1 8 All of
“On Collecting and Culture,” in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary
Culture, edited by Russell Ferguson, et al. (New York: The MIT Press, 1990), 147.
1 6 Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” in Art and Culture: Critical
Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965), 3-21.
1 7 For a contemporaneous discussion of the root meaning of craft see “What Criteria
for the Crafts” Craft Horizons 20, No. 2 (March -April 1960): 38-41, 50. This
historical definition is reflected in the text of this chapter.
1 8 Bob Sinclair. “Kenneth R. Trapp: I Start with the Work of Art Itself’ Renwick
Alliance Quarterly (summer, 1997). Susanne K. Frantz modifies these same notions.
See “What Ever Happened to the Decorative Arts,” Glass Art Society Journal,
(1987) 29. A similar definition is presented in Howard S. Becker’s Art Worlds
especially 272-99. He adds “beauty” to craft’s characteristics (276). While this is an
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35
these attributes position craft outside of the realm of high arts and serve as the
basis for the tensions between the two worlds. As such, the ramifications o f each
aspect requires clarification.
The first attribute, materiality, refers to the potential inherent in the
medium—a potential that affects the finished product. Materiality is critical to craft-
based art, and the selection of one craft material (or, in fact, fine art medium) over
another is a primary artistic decision.1 9 For example, Dan Dailey (b. 1947) was first a
issue in glass and will be addressed, it is not strictly true of all contemporary craft.
Indeed, like the high art world, crafts have come to embrace the “ugly” as content. In
this way craft artists try to position themselves closer to high art in their sensibility.
The definition used here is distilled from years of discussion with colleagues in the
United States and in Europe who work with and for this material. The reliance upon
Trapp’s quotation simply takes advantage of his concision.
Contemporary crafts, it should be noted, differ from objects made by
hobbyist (one o f their root groups) both in intent and sophistication of form and
technique. As will be discussed in Chapter 3, the period just before the one addressed
here was a time of increased interest in hobby activity. It can be argued that this
growth led to an awareness and interest within a general public that would eventually
become participants and collectors. The work of woodturner James Prestini (United
States 1908-1993) is a case in point. Trained as a mechanical engineer at Yale
University, he naturally was attracted by the Bauhaus aesthetic, which he strove to
apply to the wood-turned bowls he made in his basement. His standing as a sculptor
was confirmed by his inclusion in the Museum of Modem Art exhibition of 1949
and International Competition fo r Low-Cost Furniture. At the same time his works
were added to the museum’s permanent collection. See Janet Kardon, ed. Craft in the
Machine Age: The History o f Twentieth- Century American Craft 1920-1945, (New
York: American Craft Museum, 1995), 34, 66, 87,242. This philosophically self-
serving catalogue does get the dates and facts correct; it often interprets them
incorrectly. Also see an unpublished essay by Martha Drexler Lynn, “ Woodworkers:
1945-65” commissioned by the American Craft Museum, New York, 1997.
1 9 The notion o f materiality is often misunderstood by painting and sculpture
scholars. A case in point is found in John Varriano’s “Carvaggio and the Decorative
Arts in the Two Suppers at Emmaus," Art Bulletin, 68, No. 2 (June 1986): 218- 224.
As Varriano parses the two paintings, he focuses on the maiolica tablewares,
specifically the boccaletto (222). He comments that the decoration of the vessel is at
odds with those known from the period. But what he does not allow for or
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36
ceramist but shifted to glass because he sought its slick surface. His work,
however, still demonstrates an interest in opaque material, a quality not usually
associated with glass. This can be seen in his piece Cafe where he uses the opaque,
glass building material vitorlite. Dailey eventually became “hooked on glass; [and
there was] no going back” even when it did not prove the most logical choice. The
material became fundamental to his artistic expression, while the medium itself
proved seductive.2 0
Another significant aspect o f materiality in glass is its transparent nature.
Artist Larry Bell (b. 1939) was drawn to glass in the late 1960s when he sought to
explore transparency in his Terminal Series o f Boxes. Fabricated out o f plate glass
with the help o f glass technicians, and articulated with chrome binding, this work
uses the refractive nature of glass to explore transparency and strategies o f display.
In other words, the materiality is the subject o f the work. 2 1
understand is that Caravaggio may have taken license with the decoration because he
was not working in a concave, volumetric form but rather rendering in two
dimensions. Decorative motifs that are successful in one-dimensional iterations often
do not translate into three-dimensional applications. This is evident to anyone who
has tried to paint on a curved surface and create a pleasing pattern across the entire
form. This was the topic for long debates in nineteenth-century British design
literature concerning appropriate decorative applications.
2 0 Letter to author September 13, 1995.
2 1 Other artists express a passion for these qualities of glass. See Robert C. Morgan’s
“Michael Taylor’s Metaphors of Light and Energy,” New Work 33 (Spring, 1988):
14-16, and Melinda Wortz’s “Larry Bell,” Glass Art Society Journal (1986): 58-61.
Glass has unique visual properties. Plexiglas, a seemingly similar material, refracts
light differently and when used in large sheets deforms the desired optics. Artists like
Larry Bell did not execute their works in Plexiglas. Other artists from the high art
world have used glass, among them: Mario Merz, Lynda Benglis, and Robert
Rauchenberg. These artists and their importance to the studio glass movement will
be discussed in Chapter 5.
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37
Another aspect o f materiality is expressed in the passion glassmakers have
for the process of making glass art. If glass is a way o f knowing (as painting has
been so described), then the effect of the making of glass is critical and reveals a way
of seeing that is unique to the medium.2 2 This interest in the process can be seen in
David Huchthausen’s refusal to abandon glass when painter Richard Dahle urged
him to adopt a more “appropriate” artistic medium. Huchthausen continued in glass
because its forming (and visual effects) potential intrigued him.2 3 The process, the
inherent transparency, and the slick surfaces associated with glass became the
subject o f his work, just as they had for high art world artist Larry Bell.
Materiality, however, has a detrimental effect on the acceptance of glass as
an art medium. As David Huchthausen has pointed to the materiality of glass as its
essential liability vis-a-vis the high art world, because the advent of conceptual art
(and other nonobject-centered art practices) placed the physical reality o f the artwork
(so important to the craft-based arts) subordinate to concept.
The second inherent characteristic o f craft is its reliance on tradition.
Tradition here means practices relating to formal vocabulary and forming
technologies. Glass objects have existed since the fourteenth century B.C.E. Due in
part to the nature o f working (forming) glass - from a liquid to a solidified form - a
traditional and uniform formal vocabulary developed. For example blowpipe
2 2 See John Berger, Ways o f Seeing (London: British Broadcasting Corporation and
Penguin Books, 1972).
2 3 David Huchthausen, “Introduction,” in Americans in Glass, (Wausau, Wis.: Leigh
Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, 1984): 12.
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38
forming, prized by the early American studio glass makers, produced bubbles and
blobs that were then readily attenuated to make “vessels” as in the case o f Harvey
Littleton’s blown and altered Three Bottles (Fig. 4). In fact, forming these objects did
not require much, for bubbles are the natural outcome of hot air being introduced
into a lump of molten glass. Generously termed “art” by their makers, these modest
works were really the continuation of the traditional (natural) forms inherent in
blown glass and rely on the inherent visual appeal o f glass for whatever merit they
have.
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39
Fig. 4. Three Bottles, ca. 1964, Harvey K. Littleton (United States, b. 1922).
Simple vessels were the easiest forms to create on the end o f a blowpipe. Collection
of the artist.
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41
Many aspects o f traditional glassforming methodology have been lost and
then rediscovered.2 4 Each time a “lost” technology was recovered, it was updated
and put to innovative use. For example, Dale Chihuly (b. 1941) “rediscovered”
threaded decoration and used it in his Sea Forms Series of the 1980s (Fig. 5). This
technique had long been known on the island of Murano, one of five islands, located
near Venice and renowned for their secret skill for glass making. A form and
technique closely related to Chihuly’s can be seen when a the sixteenth-century
century Venetian tazza (Fig. 6) is compared to Figure 5. Chihuly’s two-part Seaform
is directly related to the bowl of the Venetian goblet, but it has been presented in a
larger scale and is without a stem. All glassmakers are aware of both the
technological and formal history of their medium and use this knowledge as an
inspiration and a point of departure.2 5 Within the glass community this knowledge
confers cultural meaning; within the high art world it is a liability.
Intangible qualities and associations for glass also influence its valuation.
Glass could be made to imitate relatively inexpensively the sparkle and shine of
precious jewels. As glass is a mediated material (i.e., it needs to pass through a
2 4 Two technologies most important forming methods for American studio glass that
were lost and then revived in the twentieth century are pate de verre and off-hand
blowing. It was the latter technology defined “studio glass” during the first fifteen
years.
2 5 Both Dominick Labino and Harvey K. Littleton included extensive sections in their
books about the history of glassmaking. They felt that knowing the history would
impart additional legitimacy to their work. See Dominick Labino Visual Art in Glass
(Dubuque, Iowa: William C Brown, 1968) and Harvey K, Littleton, Glassblowing: A
Search for Form. (New York: Van Nostrand, Reinhold, 1971).
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42
Fig. 5. Sea Forms, 1981. Daie Chihuly (United States b. 1941). Blown optical glass
with threaded decoration. The Coming Museum o f Glass.
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44
Fig. 6. Tazza with Openwork Stem, Venice, second half of the 16th century. The
bowl of the tazza is blown and altered in much the same manner as seen in Fig. 5.
The Renesto Wolfe Collection.
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45
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Process in order for it to be completed), it could be manipulated to appear like
diamonds, rubies and other precious stones and used to take their place as high status
decorative objects. Also, the natural (and only recently understood) refractive and
transparent qualities o f glass it a metaphor of God’s own brilliance. 2 6 These
associations, as will be shown in the following chapters, contribute to the appeal of
studio glass to the artists, dealers, and collectors.2 7
The third attribute of craft objects that must be considered is Junction. The
function can be overt, as in a vessel for drinking, or it can be symbolic, as when
silver is used as a display item, calculated to communicate its owner’s wealth.2 8
While utility can be seen in the traditional crafts, an attenuated implied functional-
utility is more usual in contemporary work. Jane Bruce (United Kingdom and United
See Martha Drexier Lynn, Masters o f Contemporary Glass: Selections from the
Glick Collection (Indianapolis : Indiana Museum of Art and Indiana University
Press, 1997), 15.
2 7 The modernist focus on the avant garde, served to disparage tradition. References
to function, defined as utility, have separated decorative arts from high art since the
eighteenth century, and references to the body as expressed in the scale are thought
to render crafts less worthy than high art.
2 8 The display function o f silver is evident in Timothy B. Schroder’s The Gilbert
Collection o f Gold and Silver (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
1988) in which pieces o f silver described as “monumental” are catalogued, complete
with their royal and aristocratic provenance. Dramatic scale and design proclaim the
utility of these works as signifiers of wealth and power. Also see Elizabeth De
Castres, A Guide to Collecting Silver (London: Bloomsbury Books, 1980). Both of
these books focus on technique, provenance (ownership trail), formal decorative
elements and forming methodologies. These are often presented without clarifying
their physical or societal ramifications. As is typical o f writing about even
“masterpiece” decorative arts, there is no discussion in either book of larger cultural
issues relating to silver (class, power, the uses of and strategies for display, etc.)
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Fig. 7. Window Bowl, 1989. Jane Bruce (United Kingdom, active in the United
States and Australia b. 1947). Gallery announcement.
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49
States, b. 1947) makes works that appear utilitarian (Fig. 7) until you realize they
are too large or too fragile for actual use. As contemporary craft loosened its ties to
traditional craft, it increasingly united two types of function: utility, and status or
display. This latter aspect remains a key factor desire to collect studio glass by
individuals, and it will addressed in the context of patronage and commodification in
Chapter 5.
The fourth distinctive attribute of crafts is the relationship to the body. Again
linked to utility, this aspect has proven a barrier to the acceptance of craft-based into
the high art world. The connection to the body reveals itself in scale (with objects
usually hand- or table-top size), the selection of textures, and the real or implied
functionality (as addressed above). Scale, which in some craft media is dictated by
the material, permits the viewer to relate to craft items without feeling dominated by
them. The traditional table-size o f most crafts contrasts with the vogue for large-
scale paintings that marked the second half of the twentieth century. As the idea
caught on that larger-scale works were “art,” those studio glass artists with art
ambitions increased the scale o f their individual works, too.2 9 In the 1970s Chihuly,
desirous of being considered an “artist,” collaborated with Jamie Carpenter, among
2 9 Artist and ceramist Ron Nagle is known for his sculptural “cups.” These
functionally and body-referent works are executed in sizes ranging from 2 V i feet by
2 feet (My Compliments, 1988, Los Angeles County Museum o f Art) to 1 inch by 1
inches (Untitled Cup, ca. 1989, Gwen Laurie Smits collection, Los Angeles). The
first was considered sculpture and displayed in the sculpture galleries of the
Andersen Building, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The latter work
would only have won a place in the wall case in the decorative arts galleries.
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50
others, to make installation works. When it became evident that collectors could
not put an installation in their living rooms, Chihuly and Carpenter reincorporated
table-sized works to their repertoire.
Another body-related aspect is tactility. First appreciated through the eyes,
texture is subsequently registered by the hand, adding a sensuality (beyond the
visual) with which to seduce an audience. This hand-to-glass connection, unlike the
sensual connection of other craft media, contains an element of danger. Glass breaks
easily and broken glass cuts. Glass can also spontaneously shatter (due to errors in
metal formulation and annealing processes.) Thus a personal, and at times, intimate
and charged relationship is established between a glass object and the viewer.3 0
All of these characteristics combine to create a seemingly insurmountable
boundary of associations separating craft from art. The essential tension thus
engendered between contemporary craft and the high art world is further deepened
as craft (and glass after 1960) sought to challenge these boundaries.3 1 Studio glass
3 0 Thomas McEvilley, “Essay: The Sound of Glass Breaking” Glass 73 (Winter
1998): 36-39. Glass artist Karla Trinkley purposely uses this aspect of glass as part
of the content of her work. Pate de verre, her usual technique, leaves rough and sharp
edges at the seams of the mold. Trinkley retains this “imperfection” in order to make
her works simultaneously enticing and dangerous.
3 1 For the purposes of this discussion the term, "high art world" will be used instead
of the term “mainstream” or “larger art world." Mainstream indicates that anything
included under this rubric is widely considered to be such. This is not the case, as
“high art” ( as delineated by urban galleries and museums) is not necessarily
supported by greater numbers than those who favor craft-based works. This
distinction is critical to a fair discussion of both the reality o f the urban gallery world
and its disproportionate influence over the taste of the country. It is also a source of
the continuing separation of the arts into high and other - whether “low” or
“outsider” or “folk.” “Larger art world” is an unsatisfactory term for the same
reasons.
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51
artists, as will be shown, choose to see the aforementioned qualities not as
limitations (as the high art world has positioned them) but as virtues, and from this
stance they have developed a dual ambition: to create functionally related objects
and to express artistic content. This second goal impelled studio glass to challenge
established artistic categories. Joseph Alsop notes “if there really is an unbridgeable
gulf between ‘high art’ and ‘mere craftsmanship’ then hand axes are not works of
art,” and the notion of an unbridgeable gulf continues to be accepted as reality. With
“craft” clearly evoking utility (function), and by implication the hand or body,
apotheosis into a higher realm is blocked. Alsop further writes that for “art to be true
it must be, and can only be an ‘end in itself produced with no other primarily in
mind.” This places utility or reference to utility as an “end” that diverts studio arts
from the straight path to high art. But high art has utility, too. Painting and sculpture
have functions as expressions of piety, wealth, or status (to name only a few). When
the utility of the high arts is revealed, the distance between craft and art is
diminished.3 3
3 2 Much of the ethos attached to the craft sensibility in the United States of the 1940s and 1950s was
modeled on the Mingei-kai (short form of minshu-teki Kogei meaning “common people’s craft”) th? .t
was begun by Soetsu Yanagi (1889 - 1961). Yanagi dedicated his life to the rediscovering and
dispersing o f the real “truth” of beauty, which he fixed within handcrafted everyday utilitarian
objects. As he wrote in “The Kizaemon Tea-Bowl” (1931) essay in the Unknown Craftsman: A
Japanese Insight onto Beauty , this movement prized the craftsman as maker of objects that have
“effortless peace” and “peaceful beauty.” The addition o f a spiritual dimension led the American
craftsmen, whether traditional in orientation or artistic in ambition, to believe they were part o f a
higher calling. See Kyoko Utsumi Mimura “Soetsu Yanagi and the Legacy of the Unknown
Craftsman,” The Journal o f Decorative and Propaganda Arts 1845-194, 20 (1994): 208-223. Also
Rose Slivka, “The Art/Craft Connection: A Personal, Critical and Historical Odyssey,” in The
Eloquent Object: The Evolution o f American Art and Craft Media since 1945. (Seattle: Washington
University Press, 1987), 67 - 103.
3 3 Joseph Alsop, The Rare Art Traditions: The History o f Art Collecting and Its Linked Phenomena
(New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 34.
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52
Location of Production: It is a Factory or a Studio?
The word studio when applied to glass is generally understood to be in contrast
to factory production. The distinction between studio and its (perceived opposite)
factory also marks the point from which studio glass could break from both
traditional craft (a home-based activity) and industry (the province of the factory) in
order to become art.
The key elements that separate studio and factory relate to how production
occurs, who controls it, and how many items are produced. A glass factory produces
thousands o f glass objects for utilitarian and/or aesthetic reasons by a process of
repetitious acts, aided by machines. The impact of the machine can be greater or
lesser depending on whether it is guided by a maker’s hand or by a technician simply
overseeing the machine’s routine functioning.
In factories, the method o f production is top-down with designers (who may
or may not have intimate technical knowledge of glassforming methodologies)
directing glassmakers (or gaffers), either by means of drawings or verbal instruction,
to execute the designer’s concepts. This method separates conception from
production, and the creative process from fabrication. The use o f machines further
distances creativity, causing individual expression to cease. The repetitive nature of
the mechanical process, removes spontaneity and the large numbers produced further
dilute unique expression. Commercial factory production may produce thousands of
identical glass tumblers in a week (Fig. 8), with the glassmaker working merely as a
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Fig. 8. Selections o f 1930-1953 glassware by Blenko Glass Company Inc., of
Milton, West Virginia featured “Blenko Handcarft” glasswares.
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54
B L E N K O D E C O R A T I V E T A B L E W A R E
1930- 1953
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55
functionary. While a factory can be small (as they are in Europe) or large (as they
are in the United States), the governing distinction rests on the number of identical
items produced and the method o f production, with the key element being the
reliance on the machine.
While a factory worker has a repetitive task that is performed thousands of
times, the studio artist has a range of activities, repeated only at his discretion. In
studio glass fabrication is governed by a single person who is responsible from the
initial conception through to production, and often also oversees the marketing o f the
work. Within this general description there are variations in involvement and intent.
Some studio craftsman desire to make competent handmade objects and others to
make art. It is the work of those who seek autonomous self-expression that is
referred to as studio glass and this group in the focus o f this study.
Studio glass practitioners consider themselves artists in the high art world
sense by virtue of where they make their art, and their complete control over the
creative process. Sociologist Howard Becker posits “a perfect correlation between
doing the core activity and being an artist. If you do it, you must be an artist.
Conversely, if you are an artist, what you do must be art.” 3 4 Unfortunately for studio
glass, with its craft-tainted roots, this correlation is not universally accepted. The fact
that they may work in an “artist-like” setting has not automatically secured their
classification as artists. Interestingly, the high art world locates the essential tension
3 4 Howard S. Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley: University o f California Press, 1984),
18, 272 - 299.
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of the artistic activity within the product produced, while the studio community
positions it within the process. Consequently, much studio craft writing focuses on
the conflict with the factory and breaking free from it.3 5 Making commercially
redundant items the studio maker engages in a “conscious, gratuitous act” which the
studio artist claims makes them artists.3 6
The conflicting nature o f making the location of production a condition of
artmaking can be seen in the production methods used by glass artist Howard Ben
Tre. To produce his works, he rents a commercial glass-casting foundry where he
directs the workers (along with his assistants), who are aided by machines, to execute
his concepts. This method o f creating his large-scale, totemic and anthropomorphic
works clearly positions Ben Tre closer to factory production than to single-person,
studio fabrication methods.3 7 But because his intent is to make unique, art-ambitious
works, he operates within the studio definition. Indeed, his sculptures are esteemed
by the high art world, and within that context he is referred to an “artist who works
3 5 See Leslie Graves, “Transgressive Traditions and Art Definitions,” The Journal o f
Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 56, N o.l, (Winter 1998): 39 — 52. Here two separate
conditions are noted for the making o f art. The functional theory o f art definition
requires that an object must conform to at least a general standard o f what makes
something art. Procedural theory maintains that art is made when it is designated as
art according to certain privileged procedures, regardless of what function it serves.
3 6 Rose Slivka, “The Art/Craft Connection: A Personal, Critical and Historical
Odyssey,” The Eloquent Object: The Evolution o f American A rt in Craft Media Since
1945 (Seattle: Washington University Press, 1987): 85.
3 7 Glass artists Dan Dailey and Dale Chihuly also have used commercial facilities to
create their works.
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in glass.” 3 8 Within the glass community he is a fellow studio glassmaker. These
contradictions of language and meaning illustrate the tensions surrounding studio
glass.
In reviewing the terminology associated with the American studio glass
movement, it seems odd that the origin of the phrase “studio glass” is murky. In the
immediate post-1962 period studio glass meant only free- blown works. During these
early years, “[t]he ethos of the North American Studio Glass movement assumes that
one is talking about hot work, specifically freehand, off pipe, in which one works
with molten glass oneself, shaping it, forming it or letting gravity do its thing.”3 9
After 1962 and until the late 1970s, this remained the case and placed the trailblazing
proto-studio artists of the 1930s and 1940s who had used cold or warm glass
techniques, effectively outside of the movement.4 0 The authors of this exclusion
3 8 Howard Ben Tre graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, which would
have qualified him as a studio craftsman, and also worked at the Blenko Glass
Factory. But he quickly found representation in the Charles Cowles, New York
gallery in the mid 1980s. He then received a one-man exhibition at the Phillips
Gallery in Washington, D.C. From that time on he has been associated with the high
art world and only tangentially with the glass community. See Martha Drexler Lynn,
Masters o f Contemporary Glass: Selections from the Glick Collection (Indianapolis:
Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1997), 38-41. See also gallery exhibition catalogues
Columns (New York: Hadler-Rodriguez Galleries, New York City, 1982, Howard
Ben Tre (New York: Charles Cowles Gallery, 1985), Howard Ben Tre: Vessels o f
Light, (New York: Charles Cowles Gallery, 1991).
3 9 Letter to the editor by Louise Bemdt in Glass 63 (Summer 1996): 6, 65.
4 0 Warm glass requires a lower heat than is necessary for melting glass for blowing.
Warm glass temperatures were easy to reach outside of a factory setting, often
through use o f ceramics technology. Warm glass refers to slumping, or the fusing of
pieces to form the desired shape. For the purposes of this study studio glass is
defined as those who were working outside of the factory setting in any glass
technique.
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58
were Toledo Workshop organizer Harvey Littleton and his followers.4 1 Littleton
was partial to glassb lowing and felt that it had the best potential for the creation of
art. When Littleton was asked about the origin of the term studio glass, the putative
founder o f the glass movement said that “studio and glass were used in the earliest
proposals as two separate nouns, not as an adjective modifying a noun.” He stated
further that he “isn’t sure o f the first use of the phrase ‘studio glass.’” 4 2 Perhaps the
joining o f the two words resulted from a shorthand that was quickly adopted without
refined conceptualization. The more inclusive definition will be used in this study.
In writing about the history and acceptance of American studio glass, there
are other terms that merit discussion because they illustrate aspects of the crafts
sensibility that is still inherent in the studio movement and impact its relationship to
the high art world. The term “ Hand Arts” appeared first in the late 1940s and
emphasized the importance makers placed on the direct hand-to-object connection
4 1 As will be shown in Chapter 3, studio glass has no single guiding “genius.” It is
instead the result of several individuals and their activities. This has not precluded
glass artist Harvey Littleton and his supporters from claiming that he is the sole
progenitor of the movement. While he was important, Littleton used his assumed
position to declare free glass blowing as true “studio glass,” effectively privileging it
over other methods of glass forming (casting, mold blowing, cold working,
assembling, etc.) It will be shown that this was done consciously and as part o f a
strategy to lend credibility to the movement and to separate it from the taint o f the
craft world from which the earlier proto-studio glass artists came.
4 2 William Warmus, “Harvey Littleton: Glass Master,” Glass 72 (Fall 1998):34. It
should be noted that others were using warm glass or cold glass techniques. But after
1962 only hot glass was considered studio glass. By the 1980s this situation changed
and other glassforming techniques (cold, warm, assembled, etc.) made in a studio
setting were also called studio glass. In this way studio glass ultimately became
defined by the structure of the working environment, not the forming methodologies.
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59
both in the making and in use.4 3 The reverence for the hand is one o f the hallmarks
of the craft movement and persists as a point of vulnerability from the high art world
perspective.4 4
In the 1950s and 1960s the hybrid term designer/craftsman also came into
use. Favored by the leading craft magazine of the day, Craft Horizons, the phrase
sought to join the factory designer to the studio craftsman, thereby resolving the
tension between factory and studio. It also assumed the potential for artmaking
within the factory. This notion was derived from increased American awareness
during the 1950s o f European factory practice, where artists worked in direct
association with factory craftsmen. European factories were far smaller than their
American counterparts and a closer working relationship between
“designer/craftsmen” and gaffers was possible. The last time a similar practice
appeared in the United States was when “art glass” was produced during the late
nineteenth century and early twentieth century, as discussed above. This small-
factory model is seen in the Scandinavian countries, in Germany, and
Czechoslovakia. Littleton observed this tight-knit relationship in 1957 while visiting
4 3 A reprinted article by Glen H. Lukens, founding ceramics instructor at the
University o f Southern California, by Craft Horizons editors as one that “could be
equally well directed to other branches of the Hand Arts.” Craft Horizons 12, no. 6
(November- December, 1953): 13 (reprinted from Ceramics Industry [August,
1945]). Lukens spent several years in Tahiti, teaching the native population
“handcrafts.”
4 4 The national organization that sought to establish this identity was the American
Craftsmen Cooperative Council, Inc. Later they dropped the use o f “cooperative” as
it seemed to place the crafts within a socialist context. With the intensification of the
Cold War such associations were a liability.
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60
Italian glass houses, and it was this experience that determined him to set up a
studio at his home designed for the making of glass by a single practitioner.4 5
At about the same time another term favored for studio glassmakers was
artist craftsman and this continues in use today with some modifications. Again, this
terminology was first used in Craft Horizons magazine, and referred to someone who
worked in craft media (clay, glass, fiber, handcrafted metal or wood) but with the
intent to create objects with art ambitions. This term - positioned between the “high
art” artist and the "craftsman" (read "traditional craftsman") - signaled the
developing ambitions of craftsmen who had begun to see themselves as artists and
worthy of appropriate recognition. Two other phrases found favor in the early 1980s:
studio glass artists, which was eventually abbreviated to become “glass artist.” Here,
the medium adjective modifies the activity (noun), thereby styling those so described
as artists who happen to work with glass. Artist Dana Zamecnikova states, " My idea
was to use glass simply as one of the many materials available because it offered the
best possible way for expressing my ideas - not to use glass because I am a 'glass
artist.1 " 4 6 By the late 1980s, glass artists dropped both words in favor of calling
themselves “sculptors,” thereby attempting to disassociate themselves entirely from
the taint of glass. As will be developed in chapter 4, this nomenclature was quickly
picked up by enterprising dealers and artists alike. In a further development, Chihuly
turned this in yet another direction by using only his name and glass, with perhaps a
4 5 Susanne K. Frantz, op. cit., 46.
4 6 Kristian Suda, "Zamecnikova: A Singular Encounter," Glass, 45 (Fall 1991): 35.
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61
single modifier, in the titles of his exhibitions: Dale Chihuly: Glass Cylinders
(1976), Dale Chihuly Glass (1981-2) and Chihuly: Master Glass (1990).47 All of
these naming strategies are clear bids for inclusion in the more lucrative and higher
status high art community.
With forming technologies used for classification within the glass world, the
craft-based sensibility was reinforced in both the makers and the collecting
community and fosters a reliance on skill as the demarcation of success, as opposed
to content as in the high art world. Glassforming technologies can be broken into
three general types: cold- worked glass, warm glass and hot glass. Cold-worked glass
encompasses cutting, polishing, engraving, painting (before firing), fabricating, and
assembly. 4 8 Warm glass techniques include slumping, fusing, pate de verre, filet de
verre, drawing with canes of glass, and flamework. Lampworking was most often
seen in the service of paperweight making in factories, and after the studio
4 7 Dale Chihuly: Glass Cylinders (1976-77) ,Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford,
Connecticut; Dale Chihuly Glass (1981-82) Tacoma Museum o f Art, Tacom a,
Washington and Chihuly: Glass Master, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago,
Chili (1990).
4 8 One cold-working methodology falls outside of the scope of this dissertation:
stained glass. A different history and artistic challenges link stained glass to
architecture and to painting. Its planar quality contrasts with the volumetric and
sculptural nature of most studio glass. Clement Greenberg states that “[i]t’s only
relatively late that medieval stained glass gained the status of fine art as distinct from
decoration, and it has done so as pictorial art, not glass-making.” The studio glass to
be discussed here is three dimensional and object or figure related. Stained glass did
not suffer the decline that handmade glass did during the late nineteenth century and
the early twentieth century. So despite the ease of working flat, cold glass in a studio
setting, the focus of that activity is separate from what has come to be called studio
glass. See Clement Greenberg “Glass as High Art,” Glass Art Society Journal (1984-
85): 15.
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62
movement was underway in small studio settings.4 9 Hot glass includes mold
blowing, free blowing, and casting. Christie’s director and studio glass collector Dan
Klein noted that hot glass had “enjoyed what seems in retrospect a disproportionate
degree o f popularity during the 1960s, lost ground to other techniques, until it was
felt during the 1980s that it had been almost completely phased out.”5 0 This shift in
forming methodologies reveals significant aspects of the progression of glass
towards art status.
The term movement when applied to studio glass is also problematic. As it is
understood in a theoretical, art historical sense, the word movement implies a group
who share a unified set o f goals - sometimes expressed in a written manifesto — that
are supported and adhered to by members o f that group. But there is no uniformity of
vision or theoretical discourse within studio glass as relating to artistic goals, usage
of technologies, or even how many craftsmen can work in a studio. The only
unifying element is the raw enthusiasm for the material itself. This does not
constitute a true movement within art historical discourse, but it does provide the
basis for the creation of a community. Nonetheless, studio glass is referred to as a
movement by its practitioners and supporters, as well as in craft literature. The fact
4 9 John Burton and Charles Kaziun were two mid-twentieth-century American
flameworkers who made work in their own studios. Knowledge of flameworking
techniques was jealously guarded by factory practitioners, so Burton and Kaziun
sought independent training. Burton taught himself how to make his eccentrically
decorated vessels and considered himself an artist. Kaziun built his own furnace
during the late 1950s and encased his lampworked forms inside glass ingots.
5 0 Dan Klein, Glass: A Contemporary Art ('New York: Rizzoli, 1989), 28.
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that it does not conform to a definition established by the high art world is o f no
concern to those involved with the movement. Indeed, this disdain for high art rules
is a source o f pride. For the purposes o f this study, post-World War II American
studio glass will be referred to as a movement.
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Part I, Chapter 2: From Factory Glass to Craft Glass
Philosophical and Circumstantial Factors that Shaped the American
Studio Glass Movement
The American studio glass movement was shaped by philosophical
and circumstantial factors that existed before it emerged. In order to
understand what studio glass became, a review of these factors is necessary,
for they explain why studio glass emerged when it did and what its essential
nature came to be. Many of these philosophical and circumstantial factors
affected all of the studio activities (clay, textiles, metals, and wood), but at
different rates and times.1 While there did exist an initial similarity among
the studio crafts, glass branched into a distinct activity with greater ambitions
and more ready acceptance than seen in the other studio crafts. An
understanding of this differentiation among the crafts is also critical for
assessing the development of the American studio glass movement examined
here.
The philosophical and circumstantial factors that lead to the
emergence of glass in the mid-century period, could logically be addressed
‘Studio clay and textiles emerged in the 1930s and 1940s respectively, wood turning
in the 1950s, glass in the 1960s, and furniture in the 1980s. For a detailed look at the
relative time frame of the coalescing of the various craft movements see Davira
Tarigin, ed., Contemporary Crafts and the Saxe Collection (New York: Hudson
Hills Press, Inc. and Toledo Museum of Art, 1993) 21-90, 149-178, and especially
Martha Drexler Lynn, “Clay Leads the Studio Crafts into the Art World,” 91-132 in
the same volume.
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65
chronologically or by topic. Given their varied, nonlinear and sometimes
contradictory natures, however, a combined thematic and chronological
approach will be applied in this study. These factors include the link between
glass and the factory, the survival o f craft techniques and mentality, rural
(regionalism) versus urban (abstract) concerns, the belief in craft activity as
socially good and spiritually rejuvenating, and the practical effects of the
Works Projects Administration (1935-39) and the so-called G.I. Bill (1944).
All of these came together to form the studio glass sensibility. While other
circumstances were influential (post-war prosperity, population increases,
and pent-up demand for household goods) and modified contemporary
society, they are not central to studio glass and will be referred to here only
when direct impact can be demonstrated.
The most historically and philosophically important reality to inform
studio glass sensibility and separate it from the other crafts was its long
association with the factory. Ironically, this is a case o f craft survival (albeit
craft in its simplest sense of facility and knowledge of workmanship), for it
was within this commercial setting that knowledge of glass technology
endured. While all seventeenth- and eighteenth-century glass had been (of
necessity) handmade, glass production flourished only within the factory by
the nineteenth century. With the advent o f machines, the hand was distanced
from production, and craftsmanship, in the sense of original aesthetic
expression was devalued and the connotation of handmade shifted from an
honorific to the pejorative. Arthur J. Pulos notes that in the United States
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66
during the nineteenth century, as the result o f advertising by manufacturers,
handmade became synonymous with substandard and shoddy, and machines
were praised for their uniform production and ability for meeting mass-
production goals.2 For both this reason and the cost o f running a glasshouse,
glass was driven into the factory environment.3 The connection of glass to the
factory was manifest in a tenuous position. Indeed, factory beliefs concerning
how (and how not) to form glass and concerns about how many workers were
needed for glassmaking retarded the emergence of glass as a craft activity.
Glass yields reluctantly to the “amateur hand.” While clay can be
formed (thrown, hand-built, coiled, slab-rolled, etc.) in an informal setting
(as evidenced by its popularity as a child’s summer camp activity and as an
2 Art critic Howard Risatti traces the decline o f craft status to John Ruskin’s
skirmish with painter James McNeill Whistler in 1877 when Ruskin became
outraged with W histler’s perceived lack o f technical ability. Whistler won the “art
for art’s sake” argument (and the ensuing trial) thereby separating the making of art
from craftsmanship. See Howard Risatti, “Craft after Modernism: Tracing the
Declining Prestige of Craft,” New Art Examiner 17, No. 9 (March 1990): 32-35, also
Arthur J. Pulos, American Design Ethic: A History o f Industrial Design (Cambridge,
Mass.: The MIT Press, 1983), 64-92, 228-250.
3 This association persevered, so that in the 1950s, Rose Slivka, then editor o f Craft
Horizons, referred to a lingering of “the machine aesthetic [indicative] of a time in
which ‘made by hand’ carried with it the stigma o f the inferior human touch, clumsy
and full of mistakes.” It has only been since the studio movement emerged that the
term handcrafted was returned to a state o f (selective) respect. The fact that today we
praise the handmade and feel that it confers uniqueness and taste is a direct result of
the effectiveness o f the studio crafts movement in shaping social and aesthetic
sensibility; it is also a reflection o f our growing discomfort with technology and
mass culture. This shift began with the expansion of the post-World War II craft
movement. Rose Slivka, “The Art/Craft Connection: Personal, Critical and
Historical Odyssey,” in Eloquent Object: The Evolution o f American Art in Craft
Media since 1945 (Tulsa: The Philbrook Museum of Art, 1987) 68.
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67
art school practice medium), glass cannot. Reasons for this abound. First, raw
glass {cullet) that is free of impurities is difficult to obtain and subject to
“secret formulas” that affect its stability and visual properties. Also, the
temperatures needed to melt glass into a malleable material are higher than
those needed to fire ceramics and prove difficult to achieve on a small scale,
outside of a glasshouse. Attempts by early studio glass artists to modify
ceramics technology resulted success only with cold or warm working of
glass, as in the ability to slump (partially melt or soften) glass over molds or
to fuse it into desired shapes. These techniques offered little formal variety.
Additionally, operating a glass furnace (necessary for blowing or casting hot
glass) is an expensive activity, due to fuel costs and the requirement for 24
hours a day operation. Only cold working (cutting, painting, gluing, etc.) is
readily amenable to small studio applications. One of the contradictions of
the studio glass movement is that these more accessible warm- and cold-
glass techniques would not return to favor with studio glass artists until the
technologically challenging (hot-glass) skill o f blowing had been conquered.
The importance of craft survival is seen in the philosophical
connection of studio glass to American traditional or vernacular crafts. This
began with the transplanting of post-1620 artisan-based skills modeled on
European practices. As described by Pulos,
[f]or the most part the colonial craftsman did not consider himself to
be a designer, but rather the instrument by which the desires o f his
patrons could be satisfied. To show his familiarity with the most
recent styles, he imported examples that could be displayed to attract
business and could also be copied. And he sought out and purchased
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68
special tools and patterns, or made his own from such samples as he could
lay his hands on. That enabled him to work in the latest continental or
English styles. However, the artisan often found it necessary to
modify a design - - not only to suit the client’s whims, but sometimes
because o f inadequate tools or limited talents.4
This legacy led to an American traditional crafts practice in which
innovation for its own sake was not valued (except as dictated by the client or
as a production necessity) and where items were fabricated using tim e-
honored methods. This approach gave the (still extant) vernacular crafts a
conservative ethos (as opposed to an avant-garde one). The early 1950s-
1960s proto studio glassmakers also subscribed to that ethos. While
inquisitive about “lost” techniques, presenting challenging formal issues (as
well as sophisticated content) was outside of their focus. This stance was
rejected by the post-1970s glass practitioners, who adopted avant-garde “art”
ambitions imported from the high art world, that hoped to gain acceptance by
the urban galleries and collectors.
Another factor contributing to the philosophical underpinnings of
studio glass was the reform-based American “arts and crafts” movement of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. A transplanted phenomenon
based on the writings and theories of British art critic John Ruskin (1819-
1900) and designer and theorist William Morris (1834-1896), the tenets of
British arts and crafts were transformed when they was passed into pragmatic
4 Arthur J. Pulos, American Design Ethic: A History o f Industrial Design
(Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1983), 19.
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69
American hands. Although Ruskin wrote at length about his distaste for the
machine, the American manifestation choose to follow M orris’s more
moderate stand and accepted the machine as a tool of production with the
understanding that it should not be used for excessive flights o f decorative
fancy.5 American arts and crafts were more commercially based, and their
producers did not reject mechanized production. Consequently, most
American arts and crafts items were fabricated in what now is, post-the
studio movement, seen as factory-like settings.6 This was especially true for
glass.
5 See Wendy Kaplan, “The Lamp of Precedent: An Introduction to the Arts and
Crafts Movement,” in "The Art that is Life: ” The Arts and Crafts Movement in
America, 1875-1920. (Boston: The Museum of Fine Arts, 1987), 54, also Eileen
Boris," Dreams of Brotherhood and Beauty:’ The Social Ideas o f the Arts and Crafts
Movement,” 208-222, in the same volume. For a discussion about the differences
between the American and British manifestation of arts and crafts see Isabelle
Anscombe and Charlotte Gere, Arts and Crafts in Britain and America (New York:
Rizzoli, 1978). Regarding Morris’ position, see Peter Shansky, Redesigning the
World: William Morris, the 1880’ s and the Arts and Crafts. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1985) for a detailed discussion of M orris’s later thoughts about the
machine, specifically pages 21-47; and Tanya Harrod, The Crafts in Britain in the
Twentieth-Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 15-24.
6 The arts and crafts firms of L & J. G. Stickley, Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman
Workshop, and Newcomb Pottery, among others, sold their works through
catalogues, in which the buyer could select the style and finish desired. This
manufacturing and marketing approach is contrary to the unique items produced in
the studio system of production. Judson Clark, ed., The Arts and Crafts Movement in
American, 1876-1916 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972); and Wendy
Kaplan, "The Art that is Life: ’’ The Arts and Crafts Movement in America, 1875-
1920. (Boston: The Museum of Fine Arts, 1987); and Wendy Kaplan, ed., The
Encyclopedia o f Arts and Crafts: The International Arts Movement, 1850-1920 (New
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70
In the late nineteenth century the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany and the
Tiffany Studio epitomized American arts and crafts glass.7 Working in a
guild-based tradition o f team-crafted production, Tiffany thrived because it
was a commercial enterprise (later derisively characterized by studio
glassmaker Harvey Littleton as managed by “the great merchandising family
of New York City”).8 However, by the 1920s fashion changed and other
manufacturers’ designs found favor with the public. In an effort to remain
profitable, Tiffany moved away from producing expensive, “artwork” and
increasingly catered to urban, middlebrow tastes with less expensive items.
Even with this shift, the firm failed to reach a large enough market and was
sold in 1928. Others who relied less on hand-finished works (the bedrock of
the arts and crafts ideal), and who successfully marketed mass-produced
glass, came to the fore. The most important o f these for studio glass was the
Steuben Glass Works, a subsidiary of the Coming Glass Works founded by
Frederick Carder, which will be discussed below.
York: E. P. Dutton, 1989).
7 Tiffany’s formal vocabulary and use of color have also been associated with an
anti-historicising, Art Nouveau sensibility. Dirk Van Erp (1908-77) active in
Oakland and San Francisco, is really a better example of the arts and crafts ethos.
Van Erp was a metalsmith who strove to create functional items that valued the
beauty of the materials used. For a seminal work on Art Nouveau see S. Tschudi
Madsen, Art Nouveau, trans. by R. I. Christopherson, (1967; reprint New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1976).
8 Harvey K. Littleton, Glassblowing: A Search for Form (New York: Van Nostrand,
Reinhold, 1971), [26],
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71
Most assume when hearing the term “arts and crafts movement” that it was
directly responsible for the subsequent development o f the American studio
crafts, and by extension studio glass. This, however, was not the case, and the
reason lies in the location and social background o f American arts and crafts
supporters. Although arts and crafts communities were established in both
rural and semi-urban areas, the movement and its devotees were informed by
an urban sensibility. Reacting to the imposition of the machine between the
worker (and consumer) and the product manufactured that separated life and
livelihood, the arts and crafts movement sought to rejoin them by a return to
hand-based craftsmanship and “truth to materials,” among other things. 9
It is the focus on the machine that reveals the movement’s urban base,
for in the country the hand still prevailed. Indeed, “arts and crafts” and its
philosophy seemed a bucolic fantasy to traditional rural makers who had
never been separated from hand production and, as a rule, were true to their
materials. Consequently, the arts and crafts movement had only an indirect
effect on the later studio movement. Indeed, it was only in the 1920s and
1930s (after the wane of arts and crafts enthusiasm) that that crafts, perceived
of as a wholesome contrast to big-business manufacturing that were linked to
9 Indeed, American arts and crafts furnishings were not prized until the 1970s after a
group of enterprising dealers in New York began to write and collect the material.
Chief among these was Todd Volpe whose gallery was located in Soho. This was
furthered by the exhibition and catalogue by Judson Clark, ed., entitled The Arts and
Crafts Movement in American, 1876-1916 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1972), that placed the movement within an intellectual framework.
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Depression Era failures, became part of the next reform impulse and were
freighted with redemptive, social virtue.
There was one way in which, however, later studio glass would be
linked to the American arts and crafts movement. Seen in the arts and crafts
context as a passion to (re)unite art and life, evidenced in the desire to create
an “art that is life,” this was an issue fretted over by urban, middle-class arts
and crafts aficionados. 1 0 But this desire to make a life that was also art and
artistic, did inform the lifestyle choices of the later studio glass movement.
This manifest in the 1960s and 1970s when American studio glassmakers
sought to create handmade glass art, produced within a studio, while they
lived a lifestyle that was counter-culture and anti-establishment. How this
came about will be dealt with in Chapter 3.
The Post-Depression Era art style changes within the high art world
also affected the later philosophical identity o f studio glass. During the 1930s
regionalism and an interest in figurative (as opposed to abstract) rendering of
form, was the predominant high art style. This figurative impulse worked in
tandem with a valuing of rural crafts as expressions of the values o f the
American heartland. Figurative artists (Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood,
1 0 This phrase was the subtitle of William Price’s arts and crafts periodical The
Artsman. See Wendy Kaplan, “The Lamp of British Precedent: An Introduction to
the Arts and Crafts Movement,” in “The Art that is Life: ” The Arts and Crafts
Movement in America, 1875-1920. (Boston: The Museum of Fine Arts, 1987), 52-
60. This goal was similar to that of the Japanese Mingei movement o f about the
same period. Indeed, many of the formal and aesthetic influences seen in the crafts
from the late 1800s through the 1950s were orientalizing and took their
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73
Paul Cadmus, John Steuart Curry, and Millard Sheets, among others) depicted
images o f craftsmen at work in order to celebrate the common man and the
virtues imputed to their activity. But in the high art world, just as handwork
would yield to big manufacturing, the ability to render recognizable forms
gave way to abstracted images, and figuration was rendered obsolete.
Abstraction, imbued with the presumed virtue of being avant-garde, became
the rage in urban centers and figurative artists (and craftsmen) fell from
favor. 1 1 In time crafts were seen as too literal for the avant-garde,
abstraction-based, “art for art’s sake” world.
Two more legacies from the Depression clung to crafts. A life in the
crafts was believed to express democratic values, which, in turn, could
restore the faith in capitalism diminished by the catastrophic business failures
of the period. This led to a popularization of craft as a component of national
culture, as noted in 1949 by Allen H. Eaton in his Handicrafts o f New
England. Handcrafts could improve social conditions for the rural population
philosophical underpinnings from Asian sources.
1 1 The shift toward abstraction was embodied in the writings of New York critic
Clement Greenberg, and this taste for abstraction flourished in urban settings.
Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture: Critical Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961),
and Erika Doss, Benton, Pollock, and the Politics o f Modernism from Regionalism
to Abstract Expressionism. (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1991), 31 ff. For a
discussion of the role of New York in this transformation of styles, see Serge
Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea o f Modem Art: Abstract Expressionism.
Freedom and the Cold War trans. Arthur Goldhammer, (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1983); Jean Baudrillard, “Hot Painting: The Inevitable Fate of the
Image” in Reconstructing Modernism: Art in New York, Paris, Montreal 1945-1964
(Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1990), 17-29; and Diana Crane, The
Transformation o f the Avant-Garde: The New York Art World, 1940-1985 (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1987); 19-83.
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74
where crafts naturally resided, and they were viewed as an untapped source of
creative energy.1 2 Craft activity was also linked to improving the quality of
life of those who were “seeking a creative outlet, convalescents needing
occupational therapy, or a retired person seeking an interest in later life.” 1 3
These associations had an ironic outcome, however, for the connection of
craft to the less fortunate and the elderly, attached itself to the later studio
crafts (and glass), further ensuring their second-class status vis-a-vis the
purportedly intellectually engaging and noble-themed arts of painting and
sculpture. “Craft is what other people make - women, people of color,
savages, hippies, farmers, crazy people, the poor... ‘normal’ people make
art” observed critic, and later director of UrbanGlass, Brooklyn, New York,
John Perrault.1 4 The later ambition to be considered “artists” observable in
the glass world after the 1970s was an attempt to remove this taint.
The second Depression legacy related to craft and individualism.
Prior to the Depression, the public had placed its faith in government and big
business for economic security, only to find that those entities could not
adequately provide when the economy turned down.1 5 Self-sufficiency and
1 2 Allen Eaton, Handicrafts in New England (New York: Harper, 1949).
1 3 Aileen O. Webb and David Campbell, “The American Craftsmen's Council: A
Look at the Future,” Craft Horizons 16, No. 2, (March/ April 1956): 10.
1 4 John Perrault, “The Situation in the USA 16th Biennial, Lusanne,” as quoted in
Neues Glas 3 (1995): 9.
1 5 See Mary Douglas, Philosophical Aspects o f the Studio Crafts Movement 1945-
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75
an honest day’s labor seemed the right antidote to the job losses and hardships
suffered by the working man. Craft activity, appeared to embody a egalitarian
vision of fraternal unity and to stand in marked contrast to callous corporate
abandonment. Scholar Eileen Boris notes that concerns about a
“professional” class, in which autonomy and creativity are placed second
after labor, reflected anxiety over the possible loss of control in an America
where people were becoming employees of corporations and witnesses to
class conflict. 1 6 These fears underscored the need to return to core values,
and self-reliance became a siren’s call. Even the government came to value
the virtue of self-sufficiency and expressed this through its New Deal
alliances between farmers and craftsmen. This connection helped to solidify
the craftsman as a social type imbued with these virtues. In the early years of
the studio glass movement, this sense of partaking in a righteous self-
sufficiency became a lure for the would-be practitioners.
1965, unpublished essay, (New York: American Craft Musuem, 1996), for a
discussion of the work of Aileen O. Webb’s enthusiasm for figurative and regionalist
art, and her role in the founding of various crafts organizations, including the
American House in 1941 and eventually the American Craft Museum, New York
City. The development of abstraction and its highest expression, abstract
expressionism, is not the topic o f this work, but intriguing parallels exist within the
craft world as clay moved from favoring functional vessels to objects that only
reference function. See Martha Drexler Lynn, Clay Today: Contemporary Ceramists
and their Work (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Chronicle
Books, 1990), 13-15, 154-157. Also Erika Doss, Benton, Pollock, and the Politics o f
Modernism from Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism (Chicago: The University
of Chicago, 1991).
1 6 Eileen Boris, “ ’Dreams of Brotherhood and Beauty:’ The Social Ideas of the Arts
and Crafts Movement.” in “The Art that is Life: ” The Arts and Crafts Movement in
America, 1875-1920. (Boston: The Museum o f Fine Arts, 1987), 214ff.
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76
A less-tangible component o f the philosophical architecture o f glass lay in
its reputed spirituality. By combining democratic and social good, heartland
values o f self-reliance and righteousness were presumed to suffuse the
handmade object. Mary Douglas writes that “[t]hemes o f individualism,
independence and freedom are connected with those o f spirituality and
humanism in the life and work o f the craftsman.” 1 7 Indeed, this quality was
noted by Craft Horizons editor Rose Slivka (who carefully replaced the word
“craft” with the more elevated term “art,”) when she wrote that
in 1945, at the close o f World War II, there was only a small group of
artists in New York City. We had no idea art would become not only
a respectable profession but a crowded one. To us it was not a
profession, it was a priesthood — a spiritual calling.1 8
While spirituality was attributed to all crafts, it was particularly associated
with glass. This, in part, accounts for the devotion to studio glass professed
by both its producers and consumers. It can be said, in fact, that it is this
quality that assured the success of glass as an art medium. Artists and
1 7 Mary Douglas writes that “[T]he making of things by hand was equally an act of
faith” that took place in an manner “unlike [that in] the New York art world” for “the
craft world of the United States was scattered throughout the country. See Mary
Douglas, Philosophical Aspects o f the Studio Crafts Movement, 1945-1965,
unpublished essay, (New York: American Craft Museum, 1996), 1. Also Rose
Slivka, “The Art/Craft Connection: Personal Critical and Historical Odyssey,” in
Eloquent Object: The Evolution o f American Art in Craft Media since 1945 (Tulsa:
The Philbrook Museum of Art, 1987), 70.
1 8 Rose Slivka, “The Art/Craft Connection: Personal Critical and Historical
Odyssey.” In Eloquent Object: The Evolution o f American Art in Craft Media since
1945, (Tulsa: The Philbrook Museum o f Art, 1987), 67.
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77
collectors are often drawn to the medium because o f this perceived spiritual
essence, linked in their reminiscences to the magic o f glass moving from
liquid to solid state and transforming itself from fire red to clear crystal. This
and the vaunted transparency and translucency are discussed by artists,
dealers and collectors as providing a glimpse of the divine.
In addition to these philosophical roots, concrete realities shaped the
development of studio glass. One was the growth in hobby activity that
occurred in the second third of the century. The enthusiasm for hobbies (then
synonymous with craft) led to the founding of Craft Horizons magazine in
1941, the only magazine devoted to reporting on craftsmen and their
activities. As leisure time increased, crafts, practiced as a hobby, were seen
as a societal good. As noted above, the hobby connection and faith in crafts
as useful for solving social issues or providing work relief deepened during
the 1930s. Steven M. Gelber writes that hobbies were promoted in the 1930s
as therapeutic for both society and the individual for they
taught discipline, instilled focused behavior and redeem[ed] idleness
...[tjhe word “hobby” became a strategic term used less to be
descriptive then to carry weight of authoritative approval when
applied to individual activities. In other words the term “hobby” as
used in the Thirties was more an ideological construct crafted to
distinguish between “good” and “bad” pastimes, than the natural
category of leisure activity.1 9
1 9 Steven M. Gelber, “A Job You Can’t Lose and Hobbies in the Great Depression,”
Journal o f Social History, 24, No. 4 ,(Winter 1991): 741-66.
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78
This quality of good versus bad, the linking of virtue and working with the hands,
and the making of items that required seriousness of purpose and
consummate skill became a guiding precept of the studio glass movement.
Interestingly, at this time the number of those who dabbled in glass as a
hobby were few (for reasons that will be explained below), however, they
were significant to the movement, for they worked alone, fashioning items
out of glass in their spare time, and relied on technical knowledge gleaned
either from commercial glass factories or transferred from ceram ics.2 0
Two governmental actions propelled crafts to greater acceptance in
the 1930s and 1940s. The first was the creation of the Works Projects
Administration (WPA) in 1935 and the other was the passing o f Public Law
346 or the Readjustment Act of 1944 (known as the G.I. Bill). In 1935 the
Works Progress Administration Federal Arts Project (after 1939, the Works
Projects Administration) created up to 3,000 jobs to employ over five-
thousand artists and craftsmen. By placing craftsmen on a par with painters
and sculptors, the WPA implied that being a craftsmen was a worthy
profession. With craftsmen and artists considered together as a class of
worker by the government, the seeds were sown for the G.I. Bill. 2 1
2 0 Harvey Green, “Culture and Crisis: Americans and the Craft Revival” in Janet
Kardon, ed., Revivals! Diverse Traditions: The History o f Twentieth-Century
American Craft, 1920-1945 (New York: American Craft Museum and Harry N.
Abrams, Inc., 1994), 31-40.
2 1 Rose Slivka, “The Art/Craft Connection: Personal Critical and Historical
Odyssey.” Eloquent Object: The Evolution o f American Art in Craft Media since
1945, (Tulsa: The Philbrook Museum of Art, 1987), 72.
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79
The G. I. Bill, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June
22, 1944, was intended to provide productive activity for veterans returning
from World W ar II, but actually was adopted to avoid the unrest and riots
that had followed the return of World War I veterans. Among its features, the
G.I. Bill offered to pay tuition for college level classes in the arts and
sciences.2 2 No one foresaw the stampede as returning vets flocked into
colleges and graduate schools. More surprising was the number of veterans
that chose the arts as a viable professional and personal choice. This led to
increased demand for art-related courses which, in turn, necessitated the
creation o f permanent faculty positions to accommodate the influx of new
students. As a result, the arts (including crafts, led by clay and glass) became
institutionalized, and for the next three decades many craftsmen survived on
university salaries that augmented their income from artwork sales. O f equal
importance, the G.I. B ill led veterans, interested in craft media (clay, glass,
textiles and wood), were educated alongside painters and sculptors. The
profound ramifications for the glass movement will be discussed in
Chapter 3.
One final post-war circumstance impelled the emergence of studio
glass. As returning veterans formed new families, they required housing and
furnishings. As a result, household wares were produced in great quantities
(after lingering wartime shortages were alleviated) to meet pent-up demand.
- Edwin Kiester Jr., “ Uncle Sam wants you ... to go to college,” Smithsonian, 25,
No. 8 (November 1994): 128— 41.
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80
This fostered the trend toward mass-produced, anonymous objects, that threatened
to make homes all look alike.2 3 Handcrafted items, on the other hand,
seemed to offer refreshing anomalies and could express individuality. This
return to individuality attracted both makers and consumers for as Rose
Slivka “[t]he object makers are commenting on their middle-class culture of
mass-produced, standardized good taste as a domesticated, housebroken,
sanitized sensibility.” 2 4 In this way crafts were seen as capable of invading
suburban Levittown and returning individuality to the American tract house.2 5
The result of this was an expanded market for studio crafts and moved its
center from a rural, often lower-class milieu of (traditional) crafts to the
middle-class, suburban high craft community.
Yet another segment of the middle class acquired a taste for
handcrafted goods that also expanded its audience. Represented as part of a
2 3 The anonymity of the objects lay in their ubiquity. Just as houses became uniform,
the furnishings offered for use in them, even when they were touted as avant-garde
or “good design,” as in the case of Charles Eames and Scandinavian Modem, offered
only a limited range of forms to select from. See Avi Friedman, “The Evolution o f
Design Characteristics During the Post-Second World War Housing Boom,”
Journal o f Design History 8, No. 2, (1995): 131-46, and Mary Douglas,
“Philosophical Aspects of the Studio Craft Movement, 1945-1965” unpublished
essay, (New York: American Craft Museum, 1996).
2 4 Rose Slivka “The Object: Function, Craft and Art” Craft Horizons, 25, No. 5
(September/October, 1965): 11.
2 5 For a particularly clear discussion of the growth of suburbia during the war years
and immediately afterwards see the exhibition catalogue edited by Donald Albrecht
for the exhibition he curated World War IIand the American Dream: How Wartime
Building Changed a Nation, (Washington and Cambridge, Mass: National Building
Museum and The MIT Press, 1995). See especially Robert Friedel, “Scarcity and
Promise: Materials and American Domestic Culture during World War II,” 42-89.
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81
European avant-garde aesthetic, craft items were touted through the modernist
“Good Design” exhibitions held during the 1950s at the trendsetting Museum
of Modem Art, New York. Crafts seemed to offer relief from the chilly
avant-garde modernity of steel and glass as they harkened back soothingly to
time-honored materials. They also offered those with discriminating taste a
desired touch of individuality.
The final spur to the increased craft popularity was the fact that
handcrafted items, while not inexpensive, seemed to offer value for money,
in contrast to the mass-produced modernist designs that advertised as
inexpensive, but were not.2 6 The interest in “handicrafts” was appealing
enough for factories to position their wares as “handcraft” as Blenko Glass
Factory Inc. of West Virginia did in its 1944 advertisement in House and
Garden (Fig. 9).
Glassmaking Before the Proto-Studio Glassmakers
The American studio glass community was the smallest “studio
community” to develop after World War II. Clay, textiles, furniture, and even
metals (in the form o f enamels and decorative wall pieces and room dividers)
all boasted more practitioners (artists and teachers) and supporters (dealers,
2 6 Specifically, the designs of Ray and Charles Eames were advertised as cost-
effective. In fact, they were on the high end, and many could not afford them.
Author’s conversations with 1950s furniture collectors about why they bought Paul
McCabe and other lesser designer’s works in the late 1950s instead of Herman
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82
Fig. 9. Cover of House and Gardens magazine, September 1944 featuring
Blenko Glass Company Inc., o f Milton, West Virginia feature d”Blenko
Handcraft” glasswares.
Miller’s Eames furniture, 1992-4.
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83
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84
gallery owners, critics, and collectors). The studio glass community is today
comprised o f no more than a few thousand top-level artists, teachers,
students, collectors (representing public and private interests), dealers, and
suppliers. 2 7 The impact of this small size can be seen in a variety o f ways.
First, among these is relatively low number of studio glass items made. For
example, when the American Craftsman’s Educational Council put on their
fourth annual “Young American 1953” exhibition o f work by craftsmen
under 30 years of age, there were no glass submissions.
The written record lags, too. In the library, books about glass
(including the long-esteemed ancient glass) comprise fewer than a third the
number of books devoted to clay. All of this has lent a “hothouse” quality to
the glass community, resulting in artists, who teach, and their students,
competing on a very personal basis with each other.2 8 Most importantly, the
2 7 This number is based on a standard that looks at only the top level of participants
— those who either as artists or collectors (or institutions) have a chance of being
noted and remembered. The craft movement in general, because of its hobby roots,
has spawned many who dabble, yet claim inclusion by their supporter and
themselves in the field. However, the artists included in this study are only those
with a significant track record of exhibitions and the placement of works in
important collections. The collectors are defined as those who have spent (a crude
measure) over $200,000, or roughly bought 10 or more significant works. The
institutions under consideration are ones that have high quality examples, not simply
those who have gifts and bequests that function more as tax deductions than as great
collection enhancers. Throughout this work, I will speak of this level, except as
noted, and will select even from this group only the most exemplary. In making this
assessment an e-mail and phone survey was conducted with Art Alliance for
Contemporary Glass official Jon Liebman, early glassmaker Sylvia Vigiletti, and
Los Angeles dealer Ruth Summers of Kurland/Summers Gallery, as well as
numerous museum colleagues and dealers.
2 8 “Young Americans 1953” Craft Horizons, 13, No. 5, (September/October 1953):
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small numbers led to a canonical history, privileged a few key players and
permitted glass blowing to be valued over other forming methodologies. This
outcome o f this is seen shifting definition o f what constitutes “studio glass.”
The remainder of this chapter will re-balance these manipulations by placing
the emergence of studio glass during the early 1960s, not in the context of a
single person’s actions or as an activity limited to hot glass, but as the
outgrowth o f a handful of independent, proto-studio glassmakers (American
and European) who worked from the 1930s o n .2 9 Indeed, the stratagem of
overlooking these early practitioners means that perhaps not all of them are
known; however, for the purpose of this study, the proto-studio glass artists
to be discussed here are those who have left a lasting record and influenced
the later movement.
As noted, by the end of the nineteenth century glassmaking occurred
in factories. American factories were larger and less flexible than their older,
smaller European counterparts. With glass forming occurring only in this
industrial context, meeting industrial needs, these factories focused on the
efficient production of utilitarian objects such as beakers, bottles, tubes, etc.
Supported by the marketplace, these facilities trained their own workers and
built the custom equipment necessary for their work. As a matter of
38-9. Glass scholarship is led by Germany historians.
2 9 The term “proto-studio” glassmaker is introduced here to differentiate the early
makers from those who followed and to also link them in terminology to those who
followed in the 1960s.
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86
economics, and eventually custom, smaller-scale glass furnaces and annealing
ovens needed for the creation of unique glass objects from previous periods
(e.g., Tiffany Studios or Handel Glass Co.) were replaced by larger scale
glasshouses. By the time Louis Comfort Tiffany and others closed and begun
to fade from memory, only commercial production remained.3 0
Determining what is properly called a glass factory is complex. As a
general rule, a factory is a facility that brings together a number of workers
who repetitively carry out discrete tasks that result in the creation of a
predetermined form. Implicit in this is the fact that each factory worker is
skilled in a limited number of tasks and that artistic guidance is separate and
provided by a designer who oversees the total production, but who may or
may not be able to actually work glass. Factories can therefore be seen as
“assembly line” activities with little creative risk undertaken by the worker.
Consequently, to increase production, supplementary teams o f workers are
added; and in this way successful glass factories employed hundred of skilled
3 0 Handel Glass Co., founded in 1885, was located in Meridian, Connecticut, made
bronze and glass lamps in a style similar to those made by Tiffany. They were
known for their patented process in which the design was sand-blasted, filled with
glue, reheated, causing it to contract and fall away with some surface glass, resulting
in a frosted surface. They closed in 1936.
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87
glass workers.3 1 The work they produced was primarily formed from hot, blown
glass.
The time-honored approach of separating glassmaking into tasks
made the existence of teams of six to eight the custom. Glassblowing, the
primary method for forming glass used by industry, is a time-critical activity.
Therefore, the various tasks relating to forming objects are broken down into
activities that are carried out quickly by each specialist. Further, it was
considered impossible to melt glass in small batches and even more
outlandish for an individual alone to attempt to form objects. Based on the
realities of fabrication, the custom of having groups create glass became
embedded within the American factory system. This article of faith, with its
potential for featherbedding, precluded attempts to establish small glass-
making facilities.
One interesting custom did grow out of the factory setting, and it
could be termed an early manifestation of the studio glass impulse. Due to
the size of factory enterprises, fuel costs for sustaining the high temperatures
needed to melt glass for forming were considerable. It proved most
3 1 It should be noted that during the 1940s and 1950s in the United States there were
a number o f very small glass facilities in the southern and midwestem sections of the
country. Most o f their glass was obtained by melting bottles to produce trinkets for
the tourist trade. There were also many small factories making paperweights
employing gaffers from handshops in Ohio and West Virginia. This type of
establishment further blurs the crisp distinction between what is factory and what is
studio. One practitioner was Charles Kaziun who came from a craftsmen not factory
tradition. He was an outsider who sought training in lampworking so that he might
incorporate it into paperweights. In the late 1950s he built his own furnace and was
encasing the lampwork in the glass himself. In this way he can also be considered
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88
economical to leave the furnaces on at all times. This practice led the glassmakers
to create off-hand glass objects called "whimsies" or "triggers," for their
own amusement outside o f work time. While not conceived as or termed
“art” by their makers, these works ranged from impressive displays of
technical virtuosity to pieces that captured artistic expression. They also were
glass objects formed without concern for utilitarian applications, and in their
way they moved glass one step further away from its functional, factory roots
and toward a studio sensibility.
In the main, however, factory attitudes fostered contempt for those
who tried to be "amateur" glassworkers. Sidney Waugh, a designer for the
Steuben Glass Works in Coming, New York, wrote in his book The Making
o f Fine Glass, (1947) that "[i]t must be emphasized that glassblowing, as
described on these pages, is not within the scope o f the amateur or even the
most talented artist or craftsman working alone."3 2 A similar book by Waugh,
The Art o f Glass Making, written in 1937 contains no such admonition.
Perhaps such “company men” as Waugh were already feeling the hot breath
of the independent glassmakers to come.
Indeed, this glass factory sensibility contributed to a continuing split
in the American glass-forming community that haunted it well into the
part of the proto-studio glass community.
3 2 Sidney Waugh, The Making o f Fine Glass (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1947), 19;
and Sidney Waugh, The Art o f Glass Making (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company,
1937). Also, “This is Steuben Glass,” Craft Horizons, 15, No.5, (September/October
1955): 35-6.
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89
1970s: the specialized knowledge needed for working glass resided within the
industrial community; but the interest in using glass as an expressive art
medium lay in the crafts and art communities. Although linked by a passion
for the medium, these populations had little or no contact with each other.
Consequently, the first 20 years of studio glass was spent rediscovering,
inventing, and transferring glass forming technologies for the service of art.
By the 1930s glassmaking began to appear outside the factory. This was
aided by Frederick Carder (1863-1963), the founder of Steuben Glass Works,
an upscale subsidiary o f the Coming Glass Works. Established in 1903, in
Coming, New York, Steuben emerged as a dominant force in national and
international glass. Carder arrived at Coming from the British glassmaking
firm of Stevens and Williams, Brierley Hill, near Stourbridge and brought
with him a knowledge and respect for the medium. Carder was a great
innovator of colored glass formula and glass compositions, and he was also a
sculptor, a skilled form designer, and ultimately responsible for most of the
colored Steuben glass manufactured from 1904 until 1933.3 3
But it is Carder’s later career that influenced the studio glass movement.
In 1932 he was relieved o f many o f his responsibilities at Steuben, and from
the 1930s to the 1950s, he worked at a small kiln in his studio to develop
various glass-molding techniques for his original sculptures, rendered in pate
3 3 Carder was replaced by Arthur Amory Houghton Jr. as director o f Coming Glass
Works because Carder was considered old-fashioned and not responsive to the
modernist trend toward colorless glass. Houghton shifted Steuben Glass Works away
from “art glass” colored glass to “modernist” clear glass production.
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90
de verre and cire perdue (lost wax) techniques. Most ambitious were his loose
interpretations o f ancient Roman carved diatreta vessels, or "cage cups,"
such as his Diatretum Vase (1953) executed in cire perdue (Fig. 10).3 4 These
independent experiments, coupled with his stature within the glass world,
made his explorations widely known, and they prefigured a studio glass
sensibility.
Meanwhile, European (mostly French) trailblazers also influenced
American studio glass. European factories were organized differently from
American ones and reflected the historical guild system from which they
grew .3 5 Positioned between the definition of “factory” in the American
sense and the term “studio” in the contemporary sense, European
glassmaking did not lose its respect for the traditional, artistic and artisan-
based activities of the glassmaker. This extended to all forming and
decorative technologies. For example, free blown (or mold blown) hot-glass
skill was valued equally with warm-glass slumping, or cold-glass etching or
engraving. It would not be until the 1980s, and with an enthusiasm
transplanted from Europe that American studio glass, would embrace these
3 4 The antique forms are believed to have been carved from a thick glass blank,
leaving a surrounding, raised envelope of openwork and narrow connecting struts.
The has been a long controversy about how these pieces were made, usually among
people who know little about the realities of glassmaking.
3 5 French factories are featured here because Littleton first came into contact with
what can be called studio glass in the workshop of Jean Sala who was working in
France. The factories of Scandinavia wr ere organized somewhat differently and less
clearly on a studio model. Consequently, they had less direct influence on the
American studio glass movement.
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91
Fig. 10. Diatretum Vase, 1953. Frederick Carder (1863-1963, bom United
Kingdom, active in the United States after 1903). Cast in a cire perdue
mold. The Coming Museum of Glass.
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93
techniques. Also in contrast to American factories, European factories, as a matter
of course, made both production pieces (i.e., those produced in large
quantity) and “art” (limited run) pieces. The prices for these works reflected
the amount of individual work provided by the gaffer and the relative
closeness of master designer’s hand. This “touch of the designer's hand”
justified (and still does) the marketing of these works as high-end glass art.
The organization o f the French art-glass manufacturers and designers
Emile Galle (1846-1904) and Rene Lalique (1860-1945) was typical of
European factory organization. Professional designers made sketches for
works to be executed by a glass-making team. As the team worked, the
designer might come through the work area and alter or augment the gaffer’ s
work, generally in a managerial capacity.3 6 The distinction between the
artistic aspect and the fabrication of works would be a rejoined and form one
o f the basic tenets of American the studio glass. Additionally, although
French art glass was manufactured in quantity, the plant size and numbers of
workers employed were smaller than those seen in America at the same time.
M While hands-on participation by Galle or Lalique with glass was not usual, it is
possible that Lalique may have made cire perdue castings himself. See Susanne K.
Frantz, Contemporary Glass: A World Survey from the Coming Museum o f Glass
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989), 14. These factories separated their
production into designations based on the amount of handwork and the level of
original creativity. The most prized works were made with some direct contact by
the named designers. Coming Glass Works continues this practice today with its
designer Steuben line relying on the reputations of designers such as Eric Hilton,
George Thompson, and David Dowler. See the Steuben 1990 (Coming: Steuben,
1990) catalogue.
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94
This, too, separated Galle and Lalique from American factory practice and offered
an alternative model to early studio glassmakers.
Of even more direct influence on the American studio glass movement
were the pioneer French glassmakers who carried out explorations on their
own, using either factory facilities in off hours or creating their own studios.
Three such pioneers, who worked in the rediscovered, warm-glass technique
of pate de verre were Henry Cros (1840-1907), Gabriel Argy-Rousseau
(1885-1953), and Fran?iose Emile Decorchemont (1880-1971). This ancient
Egyptian technique had been lost and then rediscovered in the nineteenth
century by this small group of Europeans and would eventually appeal to
independent American glassmakers. Suitable for fashioning small pictorial or
sculptural objects, the technique involved placing crushed glass, colored with
oxides, in a mold and applying heat to fuse the mixture into a solid form.
Experimentation resulted in formulating a new mold-release technology
which returned pate de verre to the glassmakers palette. American proto
studio makers also worked in pate de verre, which is a warm-glass technique
that required only an annealing oven (often modified from a clay kiln), not
the large glassblowing furnaces needed for hot work. As such it offered the
easiest technology for proto-studio artists to execute by themselves, in small
non-factory settings.
Hot blown glass, so important to the studio glass movement in the
1960s, intrigued the pioneer early twentieth-century French glassmakers, and
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95
their experience directly affected the American movement. Maurice Marinot
(1882-1960), trained as a painter and affiliated with the Fauves, participated
in the Salon d’Automne in 1905. In 1911, however, he transferred his interest
to making vessels from molten glass. Previously Marinot had commissioned
functional tablewares blown in the factories to his specifications, which he
then decorated with enamel paints. In 1912, Marinot apprenticed himself to
the M.M. Viard factory in Barsur-Seine (owned by friends) where he worked
after hours to form small vessels with stoppers and veiling (air bubbles
trapped between layers of molten glass) similar to his Vessel (ca. 1934) (Fig.
11). Describing his works as sculptures, not vessels, Marinot labored alone or
sometimes in concert with a single assistant to create his acid-etched,
“modeme” patterns in the exterior of his thick-walled forms. In 1937 the
Viard factory closed, and Marinot discontinued his work in glass.3 7
3,Two others followed in Marinot’s footsteps: Andre Thuret (1898-1965) and Henri
Navarre (1885-1971). Navarre combined the working of molten glass pioneered by
Marinot with pate de verre.
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Fig. 11. Vessel, ca. 1934. Maurice Marinot (France, 1882-1960). Blown,
and acid etched. The Coming Museum of Glass.
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98
Marmot influenced American studio glass in four ways: first, he bridged
the artistic versus technological divide that existed between artistic vision
and the ability it execute it. In fact, he worked as an independent artist in a
factory. Secondly, he was an established artist who chose glass as his art
medium. This path would be followed by several glass artists in the 1980s
who would usher in the “crossover” phenomenon that developed between
high art and studio glass in the 1980s that will be discussed in Chapter 4.
Thirdly, he imputed a spiritual character to the activity of forming glass.
Finally, for Marinot, art made o f glass had to be produced by the hands of the
artist. This belief, shared by later American studio glassmakers, would form
one of the core beliefs of the American studio glass movement and inspire
them to call themselves “glass artists.”
Another important intersection between European glass and the
emerging American studio glass movement occurred when Spaniard Jean
Sala (1895-1976) and American Harvey Littleton crossed paths in 1958.
From the 1920s through the early 1950s, Sala pioneered glassblowing in a
studio setting. The son of Catalonian gaffer, Bienvenido Sala, Jean and his
brother, Joachim, learned their father's craft in Spain. The family then moved
near Paris, where Jean maintained a private hot-glass facility in
Montparnasse and worked in the family antique shop on the rue Bonaparte.
In his small, self-made furnace, which he fanned with a hand bellows, Sala
made pate de verre, melted glass batch and cidlet, blew glass, and produced
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99
small vessels and glass animals in a bubbly, porous metal called malfin (Fig. 12).
Adulterated with impurities, this glass in time took on the appearance of
devitrified glass (a condition associated with ancient glass). Sala's studio,
probably the first designed and built for glassblowing by an individual,
remained in operation until his failing eyesight forced him to close it about
1952. Fortunately for the American studio glass movement, a transfer of
Sala’s technical knowledge and the conceptual approach occurred when
Littleton visited him in 1958. Sala had photographed his studio before
dismantling it and was able to show Littleton his small furnace, built with an
annealing oven on top. This validated Littleton’s belief that small-scale
glassblowing could occur outside o f a factory setting and would eventually
lead to the Toledo Workshops o f 1962.
American Proto-Studio Glass Pioneers
One of the commonplaces o f the studio movement is that it began in
Toledo, Ohio, on March 23, 1962, when Harvey Littleton held a glass
workshop on the grounds of the Toledo Museum o f Art. While this event was
important (as will be shown in the next chapter), this belief in a single
progenitor is too simple and privileges both one moment and one man over a
field of others. As Susanne K. Frantz writes:
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Fig. 12. Footed Bowl, ca. 1930-40. Jean Sala (1895-1976, bom in Spain,
worked in France). Blown, with not applications. The Coming Museum of
Glass.
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102
what is often forgotten is the fact that there were plenty of other
artists working with glass in various states long before Harvey.
Sometimes overlooked, too, is the fact that most o f these precursors
were not American, and for them, the idea o f an artist working with
glass was not the revelation it had been in the United States.3 8
This point o f history pits the followers of Littleton against those who believe
that there were others working with glass in a studio manner at least two
decades before and that they were instrumental in the founding o f the
American studio glass movement.
The passion of the former group had a deep impact on the future o f
glass and the intensity of their belief can be glimpsed in the title o f an article
by Dr. Paul Hollister entitled “And on the Sixth Day He Rested...” Published
in Neues Glas in 1989, this essay (and many other writings) dramatically
casts Littleton as the father o f the (studio glass) world. Similarly, in a
publication of 1999 by Karen S. Chambers, a New York writer for American
Craft and Art in America, stated categorically that “the Studio Glass
3 8 Susanne K. Frantz, former curator of Contemporary Glass at the Coming Museum
of Glass, and Dr. Patricia Failing o f Seattle, also agree with the position put forth
here concerning Littleton. See Susanne K. Frantz, “Not So New in £ 62” The Glass
Art Society Journal, (1988): 15, and the unpublished essay for the American Craft
Museum “Studio Glass 1945-1965/Revised Essay,” 1996. For a countervailing view
see Karen S. Chambers, “Clearly Inspired: Contemporary Glass and Its Origins”
Clearly Inspired: Contemporary Glass and Its Origins (San Francisco: Tampa
Museum of Art and Pomegranate, San Francisco, 1999), 31; Dr. Paul Hollister, “And
on the Sixth Day He Rested...” Neues Glas, (1989): 34-9; and William Warmus
“Nature Transformed: The Legacy o f Studio Glass” 28, New Work, (Winter 1987):
18.
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Movement can be said to have a definite birthdate: 23 March 1962, the
beginning of a 10-day workshop organized by Littleton at the Toledo
Museum of Art.” However, both her assertion and the capitalization of
“studio” and “glass” do not square with the facts. As shown in the first part
of this chapter, there are multiple reasons for the emergence of studio glass in
the post-World War II period, and as will be shown below, there were other
Americans working in an independent, studio manner. Further, as already
seen, Marinot and Sala working in Europe had made artistic glass in a studio
setting long before the 1960s Toledo workshops.
In the United States the handful of independent glassmakers worked
in varying degrees of isolation — both from each other and (importantly for
the movement) from the factory. Their education, their attitude toward glass
as a potential art medium, and their forming methodologies manifest
sensibilities seen in the later movement. They also earned their livelihood
from glass and hence were not simply hobbyists. Producing in the period
between the decline o f the glass objet d ’ art by Tiffany or Handel, etc., and
the rise of a formalized studio glass movement in the early 1960s, these
artist-craftsmen worked in warm- and hot-glass techniques at a time when
little was known about how to fabricate glass in a small studio.
While the precise number of these independent glassmakers is
difficult to determine, the four noteworthy pioneers to be discussed here,
deserve attention because of their influence on the development of the
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subsequent studio glass movement.3 9 Independently (and only later with shared
information) these pioneers were impelled by their commitment to glass to
set up studios in order to experiment with the warm-glass technique o f
fusing, slumping and enameling of small functional glass items. Three of
them owed their studio success to European training (Maurice Heaton and
Michael and Frances Higgins) and one (Edris Eckhardt) to the transfer of
technology from studio ceramics (ahead of glass in its development as a
studio activity) to glass.
Maurice Heaton exemplifies the European multi-generational and
artisan-based tradition. The son o f an arts and crafts cloisonne enameler and
the grandson o f a London stained-glass maker who specialized in Gothic
Revival style windows, Heaton moved to New York in 1914, where he
attended the progressive Ethnic Culture School, followed by a year at Steven
Institute of Technology. Armed with a cultural and technical education,
3 9 There were also pioneers who worked part-time in glass, also using simple
ceramics kilns (made and designed with the aid of such manuals as Bernard Leach’s
A Potter's Book, 1941). While working as the ceramics instructor at the University
of Southern California in Los Angeles, Glen Lukens (1887-1967) slumped glass into
the molds he used for his clay pieces. This example o f technique shifting was typical
at mid-century. Interested in color and the expression of the basic materials in the
final work, Lukens both colored his batch glass and dribbled oxides casually over the
clay forms to slump the glass. These explorations in small studios, not factory
settings, fit the definition of studio glass as it is now understood. Another
independent glassmaker David Gruenig, began blowing in 1949 at the age of ten,
using his father’s gasoline pump-up torch and found shards of glass. He went on to
publish a newsletter for glassblowers, The Independent Glassblower, from his studio
in Vermont. Others working outside the factory system were itinerate, probably
originally factory trained, and turned to melting o f glass bottles to make tourist
trinkets. A still smaller group tried to form glass objects in their homes. The four
cited above were well-known members of the studio crafts community, hence their
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Heaton decided by 1923 that his future lay in glass, and he worked with his
father on large, stained-glass commissions. In 1928 textile designer Ruth
Reeves asked Heaton to create glass shades for polished steel floor lamps,
thus leading to similar work throughout his career. Executed in an “art deco”
style, these and the lighting scones and ceiling fixtures that were to follow
featured his knowledge of enameling. Soon, he was designing for the
manufacturer Lightolier, and his work appeared in industrial design shows at
the Metropolitan Museum o f Art, New York. Conversant with the formal
language o f “art modeme” and Cubist art, Heaton’s work invoked the
traditional verre egolmise technique used in ancient times.
As an on-going part of his production, Heaton made plates decorated
with brightly colored enamels. Typical of these are three works at The
Coming Museum of Glass : Africa (1948) (Fig. 13), Free (1951), and Fish
Bowl (1955). Each uses the warm-glass techniques o f kiln forming
(slumping) and the application of powdered glass, enameled decoration. As
described at the time, Heaton
cuts and grinds the glass to shape and then attaches the glass to a plate
glass turntable. He makes his design directly on the shaped glass by
tapping powdered enamels through graded sieves and over curved and
angled templates to create overlapping shadows. The completed
design is fixed with an adhesive spray, placed in a sheet iron mold
into which it is slumped in the kiln while the enameled design is fired
on. Heaton himself makes the molds and all his tools.4 0
lead position in the development o f studio glass.
4 0 See Eleanor Bittermann, “Heaton’s Wizardry With Glass,” Craft Horizons, 14, No.
3 (May/June 1954): 10-14. Enameling was a favorite technique of these early
glassmakers. Enameling on metal was also a popular activity for at-home studio
artists in the same period. It is worth noting that Heaton continued to produce similar
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106
Fig. 13. Africa, 1948. Maurice Heaton (United States, 1900-1999). Kiln-
formed with powdered glass and enamels. The Coming Museum of Glass.
these pieces based on his original 1940s and 1950s designs well into the 1980s,
making dating problematic.
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108
In May 1932 Heaton created The Flight o f Amelia Earhart Across the Atlantic, a
large window for Radio City Music Hall in New York. Using a combination
of techniques in an individual manner, Heaton applied vitreous glazes to
glass with an airbrush, and then kiln-fired them. An article in Architecture
(1931) illustrates several of Heaton's commissions including large, paneled
windows for Stem Brother’s and L.P. Hollander & Company in their New
York City stores, glazed elevator doors for Park Avenue apartments, and
several salesroom windows. These records are the only images that survive,
for in 1974 Heaton’s studio burned to the ground, and many of the
installations had been dismantled by that time. Heaton also fabricated objects
in his studio during the 1940s and 1950s using the warm-glass techniques of
fusing and slumping. For his equipment, he scavenged and modified items
associated with ceramic production. Both the means and the location of his
production, place his activity within the definition o f studio glassmaker.
Two other trailblazers were the husband-and-wife team Michael
(1908-1999) and Frances (b. 1912) Higgins. Their work featured warm-glass
technology in their brightly colored, geometric patterned, glass enamel
tablewares. Michael, trained as a graphic designer and painter, attended the
Visual Design Department in the Chicago Institute o f Design in 1948.
Frances served as an assistant professor at the University of Georgia and
received her M. F. A. from the Chicago Institute. Attracted to working in all
scales, from jewelry to church windows, in 1962 the Higginses were fusing
glass into large sheets to make screens, panels, and sculptures.
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109
Aside from their numerous commercial tableware lines made for Dearborn
Glass from 1959 to 1965, both Higginses produced a range of unique objects
in their studio. Michael constructed ingeniously hinged boxes with
connecting joints o f copper wire screen and folded metal bands fused into
glass (Fig. 14). Equally sensitive and innovative were the vessels made by
Frances during the late 1950s, with granules of fused colorless glass, that
mimicked fractured ice (Fig. 15). By leaving the top edge of the simple,
tapered vessel irregular and the upper half o f the vase intermittently
punctured, she heightened the visual effect o f ice melting. Interested in
creating an optical dialogue between the surface and the three-dimensional
ground, Frances also added gold enamel to this series o f forms. While the
work looks dated now, over-decorated and too clearly utilitarian in
comparison to current studio glass, the artists strove to return an individual
aesthetic touch to glasswares (Fig. 16).
The Higginses also adapted a silk-screen technique resulting in designs
that required as many as twelve laminations to create the rich colors they
desired. One of their trademark styles involved “mother-of-pearl” lustered
glass. To achieve the effect, chips of glass were dipped into water,
then sprinkled with colorant for the design and lustered on top. Their largest
commission was the 28 feet high by 80 feet wide window for the front of the
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Fig. 14. Covered Box, 1948-1949. Michael Higgins (United States, 1908-
1999). Fused glass with copper band joints, hinge and handle, with screen
inclusions. The Coming Museum of Glass.
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112
Fig. 15. Vessel, 1958-59. Frances Higgins (United States, 1912). Crushed
glass and enamel fused in a mold. The Coming Museum o f Glass.
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113
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114
Fig. 16. Barbaric Jewels, 1960s. Michael and Frances Higgins (United
States, 1908-1999 and b. 1912).
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116
First National Bank o f Appleton, Wisconsin. In the early 1980s the bank was
remodeled and the window was lost.
During the 1950s the Higginses made a line o f utilitarian wares for
Marshall Field, Bloomingdales, and Georg Jensen. Many of the pieces
retailed for only five dollars per item. Highlighting the differences between
the factory and the studio, Michael Higgins remarked in 1985 “[I]f we had
had the money that Tiffany had, what we could have accomplished! But of
course Tiffany didn’t blow glass: he was a designer and designer is a very
different act.”4 1 The Higginses exemplify the designer-craftsman designation
that was the hallmark o f the proto-studio glassmaker and linked production to
unique expression.
The fourth trailblazer was Edris Eckhardt (1905-1998). Trained as a
sculptor at the Cleveland School of Art in the late 1920s, she worked as a
Works Projects Administration (WPA) supervisor in the ceramics arts
program until 1941. As with many o f the later studio glassmakers, Eckhardt,
chose to work in the craft-based medium of clay and then transferred the
related technologies to forming glass. During the 1950s she experimented
with making her own glass from batch in her basement studio and for her
innovative work she received one Tiffany and two Guggenheim
fellowships.4 2 Among her innovations were a tool for drawing with hot glass
4 1 Paul Hollister, “Studio Glass Before 1962: Maurice Heaton, Frances and Michael
Higgins and Edris Eckhardt,” Neues Glas 4 (1985): 235.
4 2 In 1968 Eckhardt was honored with a one-person show at The Coming Museum of
Glass.
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117
and her sculptures combining glass with other materials, notably bronze. By
1953 Eckhardt had rediscovered the technique of laminating gold (or silver)
between two or more layers of glass. The sheets of the metal were engraved
with a stylus, then slumped between two sheets of glass and rolled on a
rolling pin on a marble marver. She, too, went on to rediscover the verre
eglomise technique and the casting of glass in lost-wax molds. She used this
technique to form plaques and free-standing, figurative, sculptures, such as
Archangel, (1965) (Fig. 17). This work was featured in the important survey
exhibition Glass 1959, mounted by The Coming Museum of Glass, Coming,
New York, and is now in their permanent collection.
Eckhardt stated in 1985 that “I’m only happy when I am working with
three dimensional forms. I work in glass from an artist’s viewpoint, not a
craftsman — as I am a sculptor.”4 3 This statement in which she separates
herself from craft and aligns her work with art first, and glass not at all,
places her within the studio camp ahead of her time. This focus on “art” pre
figured the attitude of late 1970s studio glass artists.
4 3 Paul Hollister, “Studio Glass Before 1962: Maurice Heaton, Frances and Michael
Higgins and Edris Eckhardt,” Neues Glas 4 (1985): 235; and Oppi Untracht, “The
Glass of Edris Eckhardt,” Craft Horizons, 22, No. 6, (November/December 1962):
36.
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Fig. 17. Archangel, 1956- Edris Eckhardt (United States,1910-1999). Cast
in cire perdue technique. The Coming Museum o f Glass.
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Craftsmen Unite: Asilomar 1957
120
Professional conferences were (and are) a galvanizing force in the
growth o f the American studio glass movement. For it was at these
gatherings that the work of the proto-studio glassmakers (little known to
other craftsmen or even each other) was first shared. O f primary importance
was the First Annual Conference of American Craftsmen of the American
Craftsmen's Council held at the Asilomar Conference Center, Pacific Grove,
California, June 12 - 14, 1957. Four hundred and fifty participants from 30
states and many from foreign lands came together to talk and attend the five
subject-driven panels, organized by medium, that featured over forty
speakers.
The scope of the conference with representatives from Mexico, Japan,
Denmark, Sweden, and Afghanistan, was important to the general studio
movement for it showed the worldwide popularity of crafts. For glass it was
critical because other countries were ahead o f the United States in seeing its
potential as an art medium. 4 4 In fact, articles appearing as early as 1955 in
Craft Horizons featured work by European glass designers and served to
highlight the differences between the European factory model and the
evolving American studio model. Interestingly, many o f the works shown in
the conference exhibition (Fig. 18) were made at glass factories (Orrefors
4 4 At the time of this conference the distinction between traditional crafts and what
was becoming known as contemporary crafts was not as clear as it would become in
the following decades.
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121
Fig. 18. Photo of 1957 Asilomar Conference exhibition display area.
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123
Glasbruk A-B, Georg Jensen, Royal Dutch Glass Works at Leerdam, Holland,
etc.) where designers, not independent glassmakers worked (Ingeborg
Lundin, Arthur Percy, A. D. Copier, and Floris Meydam, respectively).
Nonetheless, their work had a galvanizing affect on the studio glass
movement as it revealed the potential of glass and inspired a sense of
camaraderie. As remembered by Craft Horizons editor Rose Slivka,
craftsmen traveled from “all over,” and for many conference attendees it was
their first encounter with fellow craftsmen working in similar media. 4 5
The topics explored at the conference related to the socioeconomic
outlook for craft media, the importance of technique and professional
practices, advice for marketing their wares, and the valuing of craft as a
cultural good. Sincerity and a belief in the goal of “making craftsmanship
universally recognized as a vital element of our nation’s life” would pave the
way for “contemporary craft [to become] a separate identity.”4 6 This desire
for a separate identity from either traditional craft or factory-based design
illustrates how uncertain craft (and glass) identity was. As already noted, at
4 5 See the original report in Craft Horizons 15, No. 2 (March/April 1955): 22-24.
Also Dr. Helmet Ricke, “Tendezen in Europa: From Fifties to the Sixties,” Neues
Glas, 1 (1989): 6-11, and Rose Slivka, “The Art/Craft Connection: Personal, Critical
and Historical Odyssey,” in Eloquent Object: The Evolution o f American Art in
Craft Media since 1945 (Tulsa: The Philbrook Museum of Art, 1987), 70.
4 6 An article and photos of the conference were published in Craft Horizons, 17, No.
4 (July/August 1957): 17-32 . Interestingly they show what by a decade later would
be deemed a somber crowd. All the women were in high heels and stockings, and the
men in ties. Only the occasional beard and pipe indicated a bohemian sensibility.
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124
this time, self-selected designations are revealing: here they referred to
themselves as “craftsmen ” or “designers,” not artists (or glass artists.)
While glass had a presence at this conference, it was subsumed under
enamels, indicating its lack o f a separate identity. Independent proto-studio
glassmakers were represented on various panels by Michael Higgins and
Edris Eckhardt, who spoke about their work and shared their enthusiasm for
glass as an appropriate medium for art.4 7 Higgins, defining him self as a
“designer of glass,” discussed his choice of glass as a medium for expression;
Eckhardt reviewed the realities o f marketing and offered practical advice
about using brochures as sales tools.4 8 This blending o f artistic yearning and
businesslike advice, seen here in an early manifestation, is typical of
craftsmen’s discourse and was still evident over 30 years later when David
Gruenig wrote in 1989 that “one gets tired of living on a shoe string, and it
does become apparent that if you want to be a glassmaker, you are in
business, and you must pay rather large bills.”4 9 As the movement developed
in later years to encompass galleries, dealers and collectors, these discussions
shifted to the profitability o f making art out of glass, if that was possible, and
how to accomplish it.
47Susanne K. Frantz, op. cit., 32-39.
4 8 American Craft Council, Asilomar: First Annual Conference o f American
Craftsmen, (June 1957): 144.
4 9 David Gruenig, “The Independent Glassblower or The Glass Bug vs. Survival,”
The Glass Art Society Journal (1989): 46, and Susanne K. Frantz, “Should Making
Art Be a Career?” The Glass Society Journal (1991): 33-38.
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125
Four years later another important conference with ramifications for the
studio glass movement was held at the University o f Washington, Seattle. At
the Fourth National Conference of the American Craftsmen's Council in
1961, Harvey Littleton participated in a panel chaired by Kenneth Wilson,
then curator at The Coming Museum o f Glass, to discuss the future o f glass
as an art medium. Paul Perrot, later director of the Coming Museum o f Glass,
stated in his opening remarks to the panel that
[f]or years we have been hearing that glass would become one o f the
basic materials available to contemporary craftsmen. Indications can
now be seen on many sides that this prediction has come true. That
such a development has occurred is due to the tireless efforts o f a few
craftsmen who, not to be discouraged by the prediction of specialists:
have boldly explored and experimented with the material and its
properties. Obviously, the surface has only been dented and the true
potential of this fascinating material will only burst forth with the
entry of many more craftsmen into the field.5 0
The panel represented the same cross-section o f interests seen at the
first conference at Asilomar in 1957, but now four years later, the audience
saw a further development in the conceptualization o f glass as an art medium.
In discussing his latest experiments, Littleton explained that his initial tests
(and most likely his visit to Jean Sala in 1957) convinced him that it was
possible for the craftsman to undertake glassblowing entirely alone. He
displayed pieces that he had melted, ground, and polished in his studio and
presented several blown bubbles. Fellow panelists, glimpsing the potential,
5 0 American Craftsmen’s Council, Research in the Crafts: Papers Delivered at the
Fourth National Conference o f the American Craftsmen's Council, (New York,
1961) 29; and Paul Perrot, “New Directions in Glassmaking,” Craft Horizons, 20,
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126
encouraged Littleton to pursue glassblowing as a viable medium for artists. Even
the factory community revised its position and Dr. Frederic Schuler, a
scientist for Coming Glass Works, spoke on the properties of glass and its
suitability for use by craftsman.
Early Institutional Support: The Founding of The Corning Museum of
Glass and the Glass 1959 Exhibition
In May 19, 1951, The Coming Museum of Glass was established as a
nonprofit, tax-exempt, educational institution dedicated to the art, history,
research, and exhibition of glass, supported by the patronage of the industrial
glassmaker Coming Glass Works. In its first few years, the museum
organized several exhibitions devoted to historical glass, but by far the most
significant in terms of the studio glass movement was the international
survey "Glass 1959: A Special Exhibition of International Contemporary
Glass.”
The impetus for the exhibition of 1959 came from the impressive
architectural glass displayed in the Czechoslovakian pavilion at the Brussels
exposition of 1958. It awakened the determinations of The Coming Museum
of Glass to assess developments in contemporary glass worldwide. This
international survey exhibition was a collaboration with Coming and four
participating institutions: The Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art and the Virginia Museum o f Fine
No. 6, (November/December 1960): 23-25.
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127
Arts, Richmond. Writing in the preface of the accompanying catalogue, Thomas
S. Buechner, director o f the Coming Museum of Glass, cozily positioned the
need for this exhibition within a Cold War and manufacturing sensibility,
stating that “[g]lass capacitors and resistors [that] contribute to
miniaturization in electronics and glass dosimeters [that] record radiation,”
coupled with the “sixty car loads o f table glass” recently ordered by the
Strategic Air Command, place glass as a primary material of the future. He
further ambitiously links his exhibition to the Triennale in Milan and the
Brussels World’s F air.S l
Choosing a unique approach toward curating the exhibition, the
museum, guided by Buechner, did not seek a panel of jurors who were
experts in glass technology or history. Instead, they selected recognized
authorities on design and connoisseurship. Leslie Cheek, director of the
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Edgar Kaufmann Jr.,
architectural historian and critic, Russell Lynes, an editor at Harper's
Magazine, studio furniture maker George Nakashima, and Gio Ponti, editor
of the Italian design publication Domus, selected 292 objects from 1,814
submissions from 173 manufacturers in 23 countries. In the works shown by
European manufacturers, fewer than fifty were designed and crafted by
individual artists, and most of these were executed in cold-decorating
5 1 Thomas S. Buechner, “Preface,” in Glass 1959: A Special Exhibition o f
International Contemporary Glass (Coming, New York: The Coming Museum o f
Glass, 1959), npn [2]. One wonders about the relationship that might have existed
between Coming and the military-industrial complex and perhaps links to funding
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128
techniques, by kiln-forming, or by flameworking. The most expressive work
came from Czechoslovakia and Italy, confirming their seminal position and
their long history of glassmaking. These pieces were notable for their use of
brilliant color and their fresh approach to the traditional skills o f enameling,
engraving, blowing, and casting, and they stood in contrast to the spare,
modem aesthetic of Northern Europe and Scandinavia.5 2
The juror statements, accompanied by photographs o f each juror’s
three favorite pieces, focused on issues of functionality and formal beauty.
The natural seduction of the material was evident in their choice of
descriptive words: “elegant,” “glistening highlights,” and “delicacy o f the
components.” 5 3 The American proto-studio glassmakers were again
from that sector.
5 2 The works in the exhibition are grouped by nationality with the United States
represented by Blenko Glass Company, West Virginia, Harriton Carved Glass, New
York City, Glass Guild, Inc. New York, Fostoria Glass Company, West Virginia,
Erickson Glass Works, Ohio, Owen-Illinois Glass Company, Libby Glass Division,
Rainbow Art Glass Company, West Virginia, United States Glass Company, Ohio
and Viking Glass Company, West Virginia.
On display in the Czechoslovakian Pavilion of the World's Fair in Brussels
was the monumental cast, blown, and leaded glass sculpture by Jaroslava Brychtova,
Stanislav Libensky, Jan Kotik, and Rene Roubicek. While well documented in
Europe, it went unmentioned in American publications. Nevertheless, their work
was a revelation. This show was followed in 1961 by the Museum o f Contemporary
Crafts' Artist-Craftsmen o f Western Europe, which included glass crafters Hanns
Model (West Germany), Roberto Nierderer (Switzerland), and Alfredo Barbini
(Italy) alongside the designers. In 1964 the museum mounted similar displays for
Czech and Italian glass. The proximity of the 1967 Montreal Expo afforded
thousands of visitors from the United States an opportunity to see the spectacular
monumental glass sculpture in the Czechoslovakian Pavilion. Nevertheless, like the
Czechoslovakian sculpture in the Brussels Expo, in 1958 the new display was almost
completely ignored in the pages of Craft Horizons. However, Libensky and
Brychtova's cast double-panel Blue Concretion was brought temporarily to New
York in 1968 as part of the Museum of Contemporary Crafts' exhibition
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129
represented by Heaton, the Higginses (for Dearborn Glass Company, Dearborn,
Michigan), and Eckhardt, who were joined by Priscilla Manning Porter, Earl
McCutchen and paperweight maker John Burton.
Glass historian Frantz notes that among the non-American factory
works were a few intriguing examples of free-blown glass and one figural
vase whose expressiveness recalled Marinot's work and reflected a sensitivity
to its contemporaries in painting and sculpture. It was submitted by Lucrecia
Moyano de Muniz of Buenos Aires, artistic director of Cristalerias Rigolleau,
S.A., and was identified as designed and "fashioned" by Mrs. Muniz (Fig.
19). Although this piece represented something very different from the other
works, and prefigured the studio glass to come, it aroused little interest at the
time. Only juror Gio Ponti expressed the wish to "steal the barbaric vase by
Mrs. Muniz!" 5 4 All of these underscored the potential o f glass.
As a result of Glass 1959, Paul Perrot, then director of The Coming
Museum of Glass, assessed the state of contemporary glass by observing that
in 1960 there was a rising number of artist-craftsmen making kiln-formed
Architectural Glass.
5 3 The Coming Museum of Glass, Glass 1959: A Special Exhibition o f International
Contemporary Glass (1959), 10 and 12.
* See Susanne K. Frantz, Contemporary Glass: A World Survey from the Coming
Museum o f Glass (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989), 43.
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130
Fig. 19. Vase, ca. 1959. Lucrecia Moyano de Muniz (Argentina, 1902-?).
Cristalerias Rigolleau, Buenos Aires.
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132
glass in the United States, while in Europe, apart from cutters, engravers, and
enamelers, there were few independent artists using the material. In his
article "New Directions in Glassmaking” for a special issue of Craft
Horizons magazine, Perrot asked to hear from craftsmen working in the
medium in an attempt to unearth previously unknown experiments.
Ironically, at this time neither Perrot nor anyone in the United States was
aware o f the work o f Erwin Eisch, from Frauenau, Germany (who became a
seminal link between America and Europe as a result o f his friendship with
Littleton), or the work o f Mrs. Muniz, who seemed just an eccentric
offshoot.5 5
Technical Issues and Expanding Formal Vocabulary
A common thread that linked all of the proto-studio glass artisans was
the need to learn their techniques either from industry sources or from
ceramics, or by trial and error. While some information was available from
trade schools (and even at the university level from Alfred University,
Alfred, New York), these skills were considered technical and not applicable
to artistic endeavors. This division was underscored in the article for Craft
Horizons written in 1955 by the University of Georgia instructor Earl
5 5 Paul Perrot, “ New Directions in Glassmaking,” Craft Horizons, 20, No. 6
(November/December 1960): 19, 25. The museum glass community was also not
aware of the obscure cottage industry o f small family plants scattered throughout the
southern United States, which remelted glass bottles and fashioned simple items for
the tourist trade.
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133
McCutchen, who noted (rightly) the limited number of sources relating to glass
and the primitive state of prevailing technique. He then (naively) suggested
that glass be obtained from the junkyard or salvaged from mirror shops, and
remelted.5 6 Had readers followed his recommendations, they would have
been working with a type of malfin, that did not produce stable glass due to
the high level of particulate impurities. This type o f technical problem
highlighted two other technically-linked issues for the movement.
First, few technical choices resulted proto-studio glassmakers creating
works that were vessel-related predominately. Second, technique became the
means of determining who the true studio glass artists were. The reality of
the first problem led ceramist and sculptor Robert Ameson to declare in 1967
that "If I see another drippy glass bubble, I'm going to blow my m ind."5 7
Only after technical limitations ceased to restrict the forms produced, could
glass move ahead and address issues of content. Indeed, it was by rejecting
utility and utility references implied within the vessel form, that the
glassmakers who followed sought to become artists.
The second problem concerned the definition of studio glass. As will
be explored in the next chapter, melting and then blowing molten glass
5 6 Earl McCutchen, “Glass Molding: Experimenting on a Budget,” Craft Horizons 15,
No. 3 (May/June 1955): 38-39. Some forms o f pre-worked glass ran the risk of not
forming or annealing properly, nor would it melt well in the lower-temperature,
small studio furnaces.
s7 Robert Ameson in a review of the glass exhibition "Six Glassblowers," at Centennial
House Bam Gallery, Deer Isle, Maine, July 21-August 16, 1967 as printed in Craft
Horizons, 27, No. 5, (September/October 1967): 39-40.
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134
became the focus of two workshops held at The Toledo Museum o f Art in 1962.
And this led to defining the term studio glass to mean that which is formed
from hot glass (blown or cast). This privileging of hot glass (over warm or
cold technique employed by the proto-studio glass artists) by those linked to
the Toledo Workshop and effectively dismissed the pioneering efforts o f the
earlier fusers and slumpers, and removed them from inclusion as genuine
studio-glass artists. The history and effect of both issues will be explored in
the next chapter.
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135
Part 1, Chapter 3 : Studio Glass Achieves Critical Mass: History,
Exhibitions, Marketing, and Collecting Patterns, 1962 to 1975
Glass art since 1962 has added a whole new dimension to American culture.
Before this, most Americans working in glass were either designers for
industry or industrial technicians. They had few artistic pretensions and their
main aim was to make good consumer products. But whereas the industrial
designer has a customer and his needs to consider when working on a
product, the artist needs to impose no such restraints on himself.1
Dan Klein
Ambition and Technique Coalesce
The accomplishments of the proto-studio glass artists of the 1950s and early
1960s prepared glass to shed its factory and hobbyist roots and to adopt high art
ambitions.2 Three conditions were necessary for this to occur: a focused artistic
ambition; access to adequate technical knowledge; and appropriate validation from
cultural institutions. All were present and poised to coalesce in 1962 and needed only
to have Harvey Littleton, Dominick Labino, and Dr. Otto Wittmann of the Toledo
1 Dan Klein, Glass: A Contemporary Art (New York: Rizzoli, 1989), 30.
2 Interestingly, similar changes were occurring in all crafts. By the late 1950s and
early 1960s clay emerged from the cocoon of the crafts world (through the agency of
Peter Voulkos and others) to gain recognition from the high art world. It is
interesting to note that Voulkos was honored as early as 1963 at the Art Institute of
Chicago, in their 66th Annual American Exhibition: Directions in Contemporary
Painting and Sculpture, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York,
Annual Exhibition 1964: Contemporary American Sculpture. These indicate wide
high art world acceptance for his ceramic sculptures. See Garth Clark, American
Ceramics: 1876 to the Present (New York: Abbeville Press, 1987), Elaine Levin,
The History o f American Ceramics: 1607 to the Present from Pipkins and Bean Pots
to Contemporary Forms. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1988), and Martha
Drexler Lynn, Clay Today: Contemporary Ceramists and Their Work (San
Francisco: Chronicle Books and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1990).
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136
Museum o f Art fuse them together. These men came to stand for the central
components o f the glass movement and their contributions are deserving of serious
analysis, for each one contributed to the early characteristics o f the American studio
glass movement. The years 1962 to 1975 were marked by energy, knowledge, and
good timing, which permitted a small band of craftsmen to achieve critical mass.
From this would flow enthusiasm for glass as an art medium, a reconnection to
factory-based skills (relocated to individual studios), and the development of glass-
centered university curricula, which in turn, would attract practitioners (artists and
teachers) and supporters (dealers, collectors), who would insure the success of glass
as an art medium.3
The usual recounting o f the beginning of the American studio glass
movement casts Harvey Littleton as the sole progenitor of the movement. As noted
in the previous chapter, he was in fact one of several individuals who sought to use
glass for artmaking, and as will be shown here, he was also heir to the educational
and technological successes of his predecessors. Littleton’s timing was fortunate. As
noted in Chapter 1, the post-war period saw shifts in art practice that opened the way
for materials not previously considered appropriate for art-making. Evolving societal
concerns also coincided neatly with Littleton’s vision and art ambitions. While he
had a significant effect on the evolution of studio glass during its first decades,
Littleton was not the only the “big man of glass.” The persistence of the belief that
3 The growth of a marketing and collecting network began in earnest in1962 to 1975
period, but gained momentum after 1975. Those developments will be addressed in
the next chapter.
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he was, however, is worth noting, because his mythology, its origin and the its
impact, shaped the studio glass movement in three key ways.
First, Littleton’s passion for hot glass led him to restrict the definition of
studio glass to glass blown in a studio. This excluded those who worked in other
technologies, such as warm or cold glass and created a tension between these
practitioners. It would not be until the late 1970s, after others rediscovered the
potential of other techniques, and after Littleton had moved on to making intaglio
prints with glass sheets, that this issue lost its divisiveness. Second, Littleton
provided the impetus for the founding of art-based, glassblowing classes in
university art departments. These eventually led to university-level training in all
glassforming methodologies. Third, he pushed for studio glassmakers to move
beyond conquering technique and toward presenting content through their work.
Through these three steps glass was positioned to attain the high art world
recognition that occurred in the post-1975 period. In order to understand this set of
accomplishments, a review of Littleton’s development, his philosophy o f craft, and
his art ambitions is necessary.
Littleton was bom into glass. His father Jesse Littleton, a physicist, was hired
by Dr. E. C. Sullivan at Coming Glass Works, Coming, New York, to develop new
consumer products for the growing middle-class, domestic market. Dr. Littleton was
particularly interested in the nature of glass insulation and its application to glass
cooking devices. 4 While being the son of a physicist and inventor gave Harvey
4 Dr. Littleton’s interest led to Coming’s subsequent invention of its commercially
successful Pyrex glassware. He is also credited with the discovery of the temperature
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138
status within the glass community at Coming, it was the visits to the plant on
Saturdays when his “father would give [him] to some stockman to take around the
factory, or sit in front of a Bunsen burner to melt some tubing, or otherwise keep
[him] entertained” that made glass integral to his life. 5
Despite his father’s influence, from an early age Littleton had been attracted
to the artistic as opposed to the scientific, as his father had been. To pursue his
interests he attended an extension class at nearby Elmira College, where he learned
the rudiments o f figure drawing and modeling under Enfred Anderson.6 In 1939,
however, he bowed to family expectations and enrolled at the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, to study physics. But after a two-year stint there, he
transferred to Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he
served as an assistant to sculptor Carl Milles. Milles, however, did not encourage his
artistic ambitions, and Littleton returned to the University of Michigan to study the
half-scientific and half-artistic topic of industrial design in the fall o f 1941.
After the outbreak of World War II, Littleton spent three years in the Army
849th Signal Intelligence Corps working on codes and ciphers for the British and
traveling through Italy and France as a teletype maintenance man. Again a passion
for art surfaced, and he concluded his tour with a few months at the Brighton School
at which glass melts, now known as the Littleton Point in the International Glass
Dictionary.
5 Harvey K. Littleton, American Craftspeople Project: The Reminiscences o f Harvey
Littleton (Columbia University: Oral History Office, 1988), 4.
6 Joan Falconer Byrd, Harvey K. Littleton: A Retrospective Exhibition, (Atlanta: The
High Museum, 1984), 7.
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139
of Art in England. This exposure to European culture and the combination of
scientific and artistic experiences served Littleton later when technical and artistic
issues arose in relationship to studio glass.
Returning from Europe, Littleton took advantage of the G.I. Bill to complete
his degree in industrial design at the University of Michigan. Littleton’s memory of
the general post-war situation is revealing. He noted that “there were ten million of
us who came back, and suddenly free of our parents and we could go to the
university and we didn’t have to compromise with [our] parents.” 7 For Littleton this
meant taking a number of jobs relating to industrial glassmaking, including working
at Coming as an inspector of blown-glass cookware and as a moldmaker for their
fused-glass product, Vycor Multiform. While at Coming he made his first clay-to-
glass sculpture, a female torso, which he then copied at Coming in Vycor Multiform
glass (Fig. 20). In 1946 he displayed this piece at the Michigan Artists Exhibition in
Detroit. He did not show glass again until 1962.
In 1947 Littleton married and moved to Ann Arbor. A casual request to build
several potter’s wheels steered him toward the business of ceramics supply, and he
took over the private Goat’s Nest Ceramic Studio, renaming it the Potter’s Guild of
Arm Arbor. This small clay studio grounded him in practicalities, requiring him to
sell pots, teach technique, and build wheels for throwing. It also focused his interest
on starting “what was called a studio group, or a group of potters who had been there
7 Harvey K. Littleton, American Craftspeople Project: The Reminiscences o f Harvey
Littleton (Columbia University: Oral History Office, 1988), 8.
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140
Fig. 20. Torso, 1942. Harvey K. Littleton (United States, b. 1922). Slip-cast Vycor
Multiform, fused. Fabricated by Littleton when he had a summer job as a
moldmaker for the Coming Glass Works. Approximately 14 inches high. Gift of Dr.
and Mrs. Fred A. Bickford, The Coming Museum o f Glass.
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141
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long enough so they didn’t need to take a class, but they wanted a place to
work.” This made him a professional, focused on producing work instead of
studying, and provided him with a paradigm for future independent glass studios.
The years 1949 to 1951 were devoted to working with clay, which eventually
returned him to glass. In 1949 Littleton again attended Cranbrook Academy of Art to
complete his M.F.A. in ceramics with Bauhaus-educated, Finnish ceramist Majlis
(Maija) Grotell (1899 - 1973).9 Under her guidance Littleton formulated a central
tenet of his artistic philosophy that he would soon apply to studio glass: that neither
the type of material used nor the implied or referenced utility o f it, circumscribed art
potential. This meant that even functionally referent forms made o f “craft” media
could aspire to being art. This would form the basis of Littleton’s belief that studio-
made glass could be an art medium.
Searching for recognition for his ceramic work, Littleton entered the
Syracuse National in 1950, which featured utilitarian ceramics, and then he won a
prize at the Michigan Designer Craftsman exhibition the next year. This piece was
8 Harvey K. Littleton, American Craftspeople Project: The Reminiscences o f Harvey
Littleton (Columbia University: Oral History Office, 1988), 10.
9 Maija Grotell, although Finnish, trained at Weimar’s Staatliche Bauhaus and
emigrated to the United States before World War II. Littleton credits her with
instilling in her students the notion of pottery as an art form. This Bauhaus sensibility
that broadened the definition of art and promoted education informed Littleton’s
philosophy deeply. Harvey K. Littleton, American Craftspeople Project: The
Reminiscences o f Harvey Littleton (Columbia University, Oral History Office, 1988),
19.
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acquisitioned by the Detroit Art Institute (Fig. 21) and provided a tantalizing taste
of museum validation.1 0
As serendipity would have it, an acquaintance o f Littleton’s (whose father
was a judge in Toledo) helped him reconnect to glass by facilitating his securing a
position teaching ceramics at the Toledo Museum o f Art School o f Design from
1949 to 1951. In addition to exposure to the fine ancient and nineteenth-century glass
in the museum’s collection, Littleton met a second key figure in the studio glass
movement, Dominick Labino (1910 - 1987). Labino, then vice-president and director
of research at Johns-Manville Fiber Glass Corporation, was taking evening “hobby
craft” classes at the museum. The meeting was fortunate as Labino would provide
the second critical component for the success of studio glass: an understanding of
glass chemistry and forming technology.
Also at this time, Littleton met the Toledo Museum of Art director Dr. Otto
Wittmann. Wittmann struck Littleton as concerned with increasing attendance at his
museum. This led Littleton to surmise that Wittmann might even “divert the
sidewalk to put more people through the front door, because that was his stock in
trade.” 1 1 This desire to expand the museum’s audience may ultimately have made
1 0 He received his M.F.A. degree in 1951. Interestingly, while coming to see that craft
materials could be used for art, Littleton continued to produce orientalizing,
functional vessels of stoneware and porcelain, executed in the tan, brown and taupe
colors typical of the period.
1 1 Harvey K. Littleton, American Craftspeople Project: The Reminiscences o f Harvey
Littleton (Columbia University: Oral History Office, 1988), 15.
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Fig. 21. Vase, circa 1950. Harvey K. Littleton (United States, b. 1922), Stoneware,
13l /4 inches high. The Detroit Institute of Arts.
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146
Wittmann particularly receptive to Littleton’s notion of holding a glassblowing
workshop at the museum; but that was a decade away.
For the next few years Littleton continued to focus his interest on clay, while
still wanting to move into glass. After attending the First Annual Conference of the
American Craftsmen Council at Asilomar in 1957, Littleton decided to do extended
research on glassmaking in Europe, where he knew that the tradition of small
factories could perhaps inform his own studio ambitions. He planned to visit
factories and technical schools to see firsthand how the historically based
apprenticeship training functioned in the European factories.
Before leaving for Europe, Littleton met with The Coming Museum of Glass
director Paul Perrot, who shared his concern about the increasing mechanization of
glass factories and the potential loss of the craft of glassblowing. At that time, Perrot
utilized engineering resources at the Coming Glass Works to formalize plans for a
small melting furnace that could potentially work for studio applications.
Recognizing that they had similar concerns, Perrot asked Littleton to prepare a report
on the Italian glass factories of Murano for inclusion in the upcoming Glass 1959
exhibition. Again, Littleton’s passion and belief in glass as a potential art -form had
found important institutional encouragement.
Further support was forthcoming when Littleton consulted with Steuben
Glass president Arthur A. Houghton, Jr, to ask if he knew o f any individuals working
with molten glass in Europe. Houghton mentioned Jean Sala, whom The Coming
Museum of Glass’s founding director, Thomas S. Buechner, had seen blowing glass
in his Parisian studio in 1951. This led Littleton to the historic meeting with Sala in
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147
Paris. On leaving Paris, Littleton visited small glass factories in Naples and on the
island of Murano, where he spent two and one-half months observing factory
organization and glassblowing techniques. These experiences convinced Littleton
that it was possible to set up a one-person studio. He remembered that “[i]t was the
impact of again watching the fascinating technology o f the small glass shops in
Murano that made me resolve to discover for myself if glassblowing was within the
scope of the artists.”1 2 Observing successful, small-scale glassmaking made
duplicating it in the United States seem feasible.
When he returned in the summer o f 1958 to Wisconsin, Littleton drew on his
knowledge o f ceramic technology and attempted to melt glass in a ceramic kiln.1 3
Using his modified clay-forming equipment, he improvised a small furnace and a
petite 13 by 15 inch firebrick kiln, heated with a propane blowtorch to melt glass.
Littleton placed one of his thick, wheel-thrown stoneware bowls inside, creating a
crucible in which to melt his glass batch. Confined by the limited literature available
about glass technology, Littleton remembers that he “looked at Scholes’ Handbook
o f the Glass Industry and picked the simplest formulas for lead glass. Using my own
1 2 Dido Smith, “Offhand Glass Blowing,” Craft Horizons, 24, No. 1
(January/Feburary 1964): 23.
1 3 Labino and Littleton’s beliefs concerning the transfer of knowledge between clay
and glass differed dramatically. Labino believed that clay has no relation to glass
because clay is crystalline and relatively solid and glass is amorphous and liquid.
Littleton, looking from a less scientific perspective found that the technology used in
making ceramics was appropriate for glass. This difference, among others, would
deeply affect the movement in the following years.
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clay pots, I couldn’t expect the perfection o f Steuben, but results were
satisfying.” 1 4 To economize on fuel, he built a small annealing oven on top of the
furnace, which was patterned after Jean Sala’s design, and carried out primitive
blowing experiments. A year later he wrote to Michael Higgins that his
purpose in these experiments had been to show that the individual craftsman
working alone could melt decent glass and handle the technical aspects of
blowing and annealing it without being bom in the industry and without
going through an arduous apprenticeship. On the basis o f the five melts (two
soda-limes and three lead compositions) and of course, the “bubbles” that I
was able to blow, I believed that is possible.1 5
Eager to share the news of his progress, Littleton presented his experiments
to the third Annual Conference of American Craftsmen Council at Lake George,
New York, in 1959 and exhibited glass he had formed hot and altered in a cold state.
A panel moderated by Littleton discussed 11 methods of glassworking, and again
fellow panelist Paul Perrot seconded Littleton’s belief that glass offered endless
potential for creativity. The panel concluded that there were currently no more than
half a dozen American artists working with glass outside o f the factory. By 1960,
buoyed by collegial enthusiasm and clear in his goals, Littleton asked be relieved of
his teaching duties for two months in order to study all stages o f the glass- melting
process.
1 4 As quoted in Susanne K. Frantz “The Evolution of Studio Glass Collecting and
Documentation in the United States,” Contemporary Craft and the Saxe Collection
(Toledo: The Toledo Museum of Art and Hudson Hills Press, 1993) 21, and Dido
Smith. “Offhand Glass Blowing.” Craft Horizons 24, N o.l (January/Feburary 1964):
53. At this time Littleton attempted to get support for this research from granting
organizations, but he was unsuccessful.
1 5 Susanne K. Frantz, Contemporary Glass: A World Survey from the Coming
Museum o f Glass (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989), 46.
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149
To further proselytize for studio glass, Littleton participated in a panel
chaired by Kenneth Wilson, then curator at The Coming Museum of Glass at the
1961 Fourth National Conference of the American Craftsmen's Council held at the
University o f Washington, Seattle.1 6 He discussed the future o f glass as an art
medium, and Perrot, who also attended, again reinforced his position him by stating
in his opening remarks to the panel that
[f]or years we have been hearing that glass would become one of the basic
materials available to contemporary craftsmen. Indications can now be seen
on many sides that this prediction has come true. That such a development
has occurred is due to the tireless efforts of a few craftsmen who, not to be
discouraged by the prediction of specialists: have boldly explored and
experimented with the material and its properties. Obviously, the surface has
only been dented and the true potential of this fascinating material will only
burst forth with the entry of many more craftsmen into the field.1 7
1 6 It was at this conference that high art world theorist Rudolph Amheim stated that
for the crafts “the search for form can be successful only if it is also conducted as a
search for content.” This linking of form to content would become a central issue for
glass in the next decade. See Charles Sawyer, “Education of the Craftsman: Its
Changing Role” Craft Horizons, 23, No. 3 (May/June, 1963); 10-13, 52. Art
historian and socialist Harold Rosenberg, who was pro-craft because of its perceived
link to the masses, also attended the 1961 conference and served as a panelist.
Dwight MacDonald attended as well. The attendance of these personalities
underscores the early connection that crafts had to a socialist sensibility. This
connection, and other craft-linked associations, would have to recede if glass as to be
accepted by the urban high art world. See American Craftsmen’s Council. Research
in the Crafts: Papers Delivered at the Fourth National Conference o f the American
Craftsmen’ s Council, (New York, 1961), and Erika Doss, Benton, Pollock, and the
Politics o f Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism. (Chicago:
University o f Chicago Press, 1991) for a discussion of this connection as it relates to
painting and sculpture.
1 7 American Craftsmen’s Council, Research in the Crafts: Papers Delivered at the
Fourth National Conference o f the American Craftsmen’ s Council, (New York,
1961), 29.
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Stirring language and mutual encouragement seemed to assure that what was now
characterized as Littleton’s “dream” could be realized. Once again reviewing his
latest experiments, Littleton explained that his initial tests convinced him that it was
possible for the craftsman to undertake glassblowing entirely alone. He displayed
pieces that he had melted, ground, and polished while working alone in his studio.
Fellow panelists, glimpsing the potential, encouraged Littleton to pursue
glassblowing as a viable medium. Even the factory community revised its position,
and Dr. Frederic Schuler, a scientist for Coming Glass Works, spoke on the
properties o f glass and its suitability for use by craftsmen.
In what would become a typical pattern, Littleton neatly positioned himself
as an artist standing up against the conformity of industrial manufacturing and as
disinterested in technical issues. Declaring glass technique as “no more difficult that
pottery,” he wrote in 1964 that
an aura of impossibility has prevented artists from realizing [glass’s]
expressive potential, particularly in the field of offhand glassblowing. This
technique most needs the artist’s uninhibited approach to counter the
uniformity of almost all industrial production.
The “technique” that Littleton acknowledged, however, was, at this time, only
resident in the factory. It would be Dominick Labino who would introduce it to the
studio glass movement.
Labino was well known to Littleton, for they frequently played poker when
Littleton stayed over night in Toledo on Wednesdays after teaching. Labino
1 8 Dido Smith, “Offhand Blowing,” Craft Horizons 24, N o.l (January/Feburary
1964), 22.
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embodied the movement as it sprang from both the factory and the hobbyist’s
passion. Trained as an electrical engineer at the Allegheny Vocational High School,
Pittsburgh (1928), and then at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Labino had a
lifelong love of tools, inventing and problem-solving, which he coupled with a
passion for artistic endeavors: as a child he had carved wood and later designed
jewelry and painted. A true inventor, Labino felt that “machines were more beautiful
than art because they are doing something, and they are doing it for a purpose.” 1 9
At this juncture in the development of American studio glass, it was Labino’s tools
and inventions that the studio movement needed. 2 0
Just as Steuben’s Frederick Carder had done before him, Labino carried out
glassblowing experiments while working at an industrial glassmaking firm. During
the 1930s Labino ran the Owens-Illinois Glass Co. milk bottle plant, where he had a
small laboratory in which to concoct new glass formulas. In 1940 Ben Alderson,
1 9 Jane Falconer Byrd, “A Conversation with Dominick Labino,” Dominick Labino:
Glass Retrospective (Cullowhee, North Carolina: Western Carolina University,
1982), 9. Between 1939 and 1982, Labino received sixty patents for work on
formulas for high-quality, stable glass, honoring his research into glass composition,
furnace design, and devices for glass forming. His chief accomplishment was the
invention of silica fiber for use in jet aircraft, which eventually led to his designing a
machine that forms glass fiber into insulation for pipes. Three o f his glass fibers were
used as insulation in the National Space Agency's Apollo space capsules. Daniel E.
Hogan, Dominick Labino: Decade o f Glass Craftsmanship, 1964 - 1974, (Toledo:
Toledo Museum o f Art, 1974), and Boris Nelson, “Dominick Labino: A Renaissance
Man in the 20th Century,” The Sunday Blade, Toledo Magazine (Aug. 22, 1982): 8.
2 0 Always inquisitive, Labino investigated how Egyptians had fabricated their core-
formed glass vials and subsequently published his findings in the Journal o f Glass
Studies. See Robert Florian “Dominick Labino: The Color of Glass Dictates Form,”
Craft Horizons, 26, No. 4(July/August 1966): 28-29 and Roger D. Bonham,
“Dominick Labino,” Ceramics Monthly, 15, No. 9, (November, 1967): 14.
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152
Labino’s predecessor at the plant, showed him how to blow glass. Although
Labino enjoyed the experience, he did not pursue it as an art but rather as an
occasional hobby. He noted later that while he was working with Johns-Manville, he
had a home furnace where at night he would blow glass as more or less a hobby. But
the hobby had noteworthy successes: in 1958 Labino fabricated a paperweight as a
retirement gift for a friend, and by 1960 he had melted a batch o f glass and fashioned
a primitive blowpipe on which to blow bottles in his studio.2 1
Labino’s interest in studio glass was the result of his frustration with industry.
As he recalled, “I had just had it in industry. I would say to myself, ‘How many
years will I have to stay here until I can decide to do something that I don’t have to
get approved by fourteen to twenty people?”’ 22 His home studio offered
independent activity that fused Labino’s interest in the potential of glass for art and
his understanding of glass chemistry, both of which were necessary to the success of
the 1962 Toledo Workshops.
The final element that coalesced in 1962 was the attracting of institutional
interest. This occurred when Otto Wittmann, perhaps sensing the appeal of glass to
the general public, took an interest in the notion of studio glass and encouraged the
holding of a workshop on the grounds of the museum. This led to the galvanizing
1962 Toledo Workshops.
2 1 Jane Falconer Byrd, “A Conversation with Dominick Labino,” Dominick Labino:
Glass Retrospective (Cullowhee, North Carolina: Western Carolina University,
1982).
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The Toledo Workshops
153
Harvey Littleton was invited by Otto Wittmann to consider using the
resources of the museum and the city of Toledo (known for its Libbey Glass factory)
as a site for an experimental glassblowing workshop. The garage that had once been
part of the recently razed director’s residence on the museum grounds was offered
and accepted.2 3 The dates were set for March 23 to April 1, 1962. Norman
Schulman, the ceramics instructor at the museum’s School of Design and an art
education supervisor, and Charles Gunther were assigned to help organize the week
long program. In addition to glassblowing, information about kiln construction, glass
composition, glass melting, casting, Iampworking, and finishing techniques were
also offered. An overview of historical glass was given by the museum staff, and a
tour of the Libbey Glass plant in Toledo was arranged. The afternoons would be
devoted to glassblowing.
Seven students signed up with a handful of others joining unofficially as the
workshop progressed. The attendees ranged from beginning ceramists to university
art faculty.2 4 Edith Franklin, one of the few women participants, remembers “[a]t
2 2 Jane Falconer Byrd, “A Conversation with Dominick Labino,” Dominick Labino:
Glass Retrospective (Cullowhee, North Carolina: Western Carolina University,
1982), 9.
2 3 The building in which the workshop was held is variously described as a shed or a
garage. I will refer to is as a garage, as this terminology was agreed to by the Glass
Art Society when it held its “From Garage to Glory Hole” 1993 conference at the
Toledo Museum of Art.
2 4 The attendees for the first workshop were ceramist Clayton Bailey, Edith Franklin,
Karl Martz, Tom MaGlauchlin, William Pitney, Dora Reynolds, and ceramist John
Stephenson. The second workshop was attended by Erik Erikson, Robert Florian,
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154
first the course was only for college instructors, but later [Norm Schulman] came
to me and said I could take it if I paid fifty dollars. I ran to get the money.” 2 5 In
addition to being hosted by the Toledo Museum of Art, further institutional
validation was conferred when all registered students received three college credits
from the University of Toledo.
To help with technical aspects, Littleton enlisted Labino, who provided glass
marbles for melting into a malleable batch and technical advice about which bricks
to use for the construction of the furnace.2 6 To help fashion it, Labino donated the
steel and burner for use with the furnace bricks brought by Littleton from Wisconsin.
Companionable in their curiosity about technique and their passion for glass,
Littleton and Labino then focused on next issue that needed solving: how to prepare
molten glass that could be blown. But the first batch of glass did not melt into a
workable consistency, and the stoneware container (a Littleton vessel) used as the
crucible broke apart in the heat. Labino suggested that they remove the failed batch
and melt directly into the tank. He also urged them to not waste time on perfecting
glass formulas and instead to use his #475 glass marbles (usually employed for
making fiberglass at the Johns-Manville Fiber Glass company). These marbles
Rosemary Gulassa, Sister Jeannine (O.P. Siena Heights College, Toledo), John
Karrasch, ceramist Howard Kottler, Elaine Lukasik, Octavio Medelin, Diane Powell,
June Wilson, and Stanley Zielinski. Clayton Bailey also returned.
2 5 Edith Franklin, “Where were You in ’62?” Glass Art Society Journal, (1993), 16.
2 6 Harvey K. Littleton in American Craftspeople Project: The Reminiscences o f
Harvey Littleton, (Columbia University, Oral History Office, 1988), 26, and Jane
Falconer Byrd, “A Conversation with Dominick Labino,” Dominick Labino: Glass
Retrospective. (Cullowhee, North Carolina: Western Carolina University, 1982).
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155
melted at a low temperature and maintained a pliable consistency suitable for
blowing. Annealing was accomplished by placing the exploratory bubbles in a
vermiculite-filled can. After overcoming these technical hurdles, the students were
able to experiment with molten glass for the first time.
But Littleton dreamed of blowing glass and for that professional
glassblowing knowledge was still needed. It was provided by the sixty-nine year-old
Harvey Leafgreen, a retired blower from the Libbey Division o f Owens-Illinois in
Toledo. Intrigued by the activities at the museum, he decided to visit and Franklin
remembers
[tjhe first day Harvey Leafgreen came, no one knew what he was there for.
He took off his coat, got a blowpipe and some of the melted glass marbles
from the furnace, and blew a bubble by putting his thumb over the blowpipe
hole. I remember it was like magic that there was this bubble on the other
end. 2 7
Leafgreen was later joined by Jim Nelson, a retired factory glassblower who was
then a guard at the museum. In this way factory knowledge rejoined artistic energy
and was supported by the museum’s cultural imprimatur.
The first workshop was followed by another three months later, June 18 - 30.
Through the efforts o f Wittmann and Littleton, the second workshop was funded by
grants from Scandinavian silvermaker Georg Jensen, Inc., and the University of
Wisconsin Research Committee. This led to a more ambitious workshop schedule
that included lectures on the history of glass and a lecture on furnace and annealing
oven technology by Larry Gagan from Johns-Mansville Fiber Glass. There were
2 7 Edith Franklin, “Where were You in ’62?” Glass Art Society Journal, (1993), 17.
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156
further demonstrations in glassblowing by Leafgreen and Nelson, and Nils
9 8
Carlson of Detroit demonstrated lampworking. Again, each student had the goal of
completing a simple blown object from start to finish.
But even in these heady days of experimentation, an attitude that was to mark
one of the fault lines within the movement developed. Not all who were there were
interested in blowing glass. Clayton Bailey, a ceramist and attendee of both
workshops, remembers that he “was always very sensitive about being seen as one of
Harvey Littleton’s followers. So [he] didn’t blow glass at the workshop. Instead [he]
was the only one working with the torch, making strings of glass beads.” 2 9 By
choosing not to work with blown glass, Bailey was effectively placed outside of the
studio “definition,” and indeed, he made his mark in the craft world through his work
as an artist and teacher in clay, not glass.
Upon completion of the first workshop, the newly energized Littleton
“became an evangelist” with a “missionary bent,” promoting glassblowing as the
true studio glass activity. This belief received further impetus when he received
prominent popular press coverage in a Life magazine article in 1966. Featured along
with 11 other craftsmen, including ceramist Peter Voulkos, Littleton was described
as a “glassblower who deliberately crafts bubbles and flaws” and was quoted as
saying that “my pieces are experimental and intended to show the breadth of glass as
2 8 Susanne K. Frantz, Contemporary Glass: A World Survey from the Coming
Museum o f Glass (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989), 52.
2 9 Clayton Bailey, “Where were You in ’62?” Glass Art Society Journal, (1993), 18.
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157
a medium.” As the only glassmaker in the article, Littleton found his image the
leader of the studio glass movement further enhanced.3 0
To spread the news about the success of glassblowing by artists, a report on
the second Toledo Workshop was published in mimeographed form as the Glass
Workshop Report (1962). This document recorded the accomplishment, disseminated
the technical information, and formalized the vision. In addition to including
comments from the students, a technical section about glass formulas, and a listing of
equipment sources, the report (written with input by Littleton) stated that the purpose
of the workshop had been
to introduce the basic material (glass), the molten metal, to the artists and
craftsmen - to design and test equipment which they might construct for
themselves - to investigate techniques for the artist working alone - to look
with this knowledge at the glass of the past and present - to look at education
possibilities within the secondary, college and university systems.3 1
In this way the workshop participants, led by Littleton, defined themselves (the
studio glass artists) as those who work with hot glass and who have a commitment to
expanding glass education. This statement served as the informal “manifesto” for the
American studio glass movement for the next fifteen years. With the success of the
workshops and a manifesto in place, studio glass achieved separation from both the
factory and the hobbyists, it had reformulated, with the museum’s blessing, a new
3 0 “Old Crafts Find New Hands,” Life 61, No. 5, (July 29, 1966), 34-41. Also
included in the article were Lenore Tawney, Paul Evans, Paolo Solari, Wendell
Castle, Otto and Peggy Holbein, Francesca Tymauer, Bill Sax, Dorian Zachai, Alice
Parrot and Peter Voulkos. Voulkos is also featured in the editor’s note and described
as a “sculptor” This indicates the distance at the time between clay and glass in terms
of their acceptance as art mediums.
3 1 Toledo Museum o f Art, Glass Workshop Report (June, 1962), 2.
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158
identity. Now it embarked on the process o f institutionalization within university
art departments.
Institutionalization: Glassmaking Moves to the Universities
The period from 1962 to about 1975 was a time o f new energy and high
excitement. In those days I went to Toledo a lot thanks to [szc] Dominick
Labino’s support. Around the country people were doing lots o f workshops,
blowing glass, doing big things...there were few glass exhibitions, few
collectors of glass - not very much to glass then as I look back and
remember.3 2
- Fritz Dreisbach, Artist
Before the Toledo workshops, glassmaking - then termed “glass technology” - if it
was included at all in academic settings was part o f “manual arts” curriculum or
taught as a hobby activity. Now it moved into university and college programs and,
most significantly, into fine arts departments. This development was critical for
glass; it meant that after 1964 glass artists were increasingly college-educated with a
master’s o f fine arts program that required the same coursework demanded of
painting or sculpture majors. How this institutionalization occurred, its profound
effects on the field, and the ways in which it set the stage for glass to join the high art
world in the post-1975 period need explication.3 3
3 2 Fritz Dreisbach, “Thirty Years Before the Glory Hole,” Glass Art Society Journal.
(1995): 62.
3 3 It should be noted that clay preceded glass in acceptance in college curriculums
during the 1940s. See Martha Drexler Lynn. “Clay Leads the Studio Crafts into the
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159
Glass education developed along three tracks. The first of these being
found in art departments of universities and colleges. The second involved
enhancement of the already-established seasonal and regional craft centers to include
studio glass courses. The third track was the expansion of the network of traveling
workshops led by established glassmakers. The establishment of glass as part of
higher education; the locating o f glass within craft centers; and an expanded network
of traveling glass ombudsmen created an infrastructure of artists, teachers, and
eventually collectors that defined the interconnected glass community. The
establishment of these tracks was initially spurred by the achievements of Littleton
and his early group of hot glass aficionados and was the crowning achievement of
this period.
While the post-1962 period saw dramatic growth in educational opportunities
for would-be studio glass artists, the interest in having glass included in the art-based
curricula pre-dates 1962. In 1956 glass artist Robert Willson received a national
study grant to undertake research at The Coming Museum o f Glass on the historical
and technical background of glass used in art, architecture, and crafts worldwide. In
order to understand the European approach to glass education and its long history,
Willson visited and collaborated with Alfredo Barbini and other craftsmen in
Murano, Italy, to fabricate glass sculpture. As a result o f his experience, Willson
urged support for the training of artists in the use of glass as an art medium.
Art World.” Contemporary Crafts and the Saxe Collectionx (Toledo Museum of Art,
New York: Hudson Hills Press, Inc. 1993), 90-99.
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160
Willson’s work helped establish a climate for considering the inclusion of glass in
college curricula.
Another program began in the 1950s at New York State University, at Alfred.
Known for its technological expertise and long association with industry, the Alfred
campus offered a laboratory course in glass technology that included an opportunity
to blow glass. Each St. Patrick’s Day, a small outdoor furnace was lit and blowers
from the nearby Steuben factory in Coming would demonstrate their craft. Alfred
ceramist and drawing instructor Andre Billeci (b. 1933) requested and was granted
the right to keep the furnace going throughout the summer of 1962, and with
assistance from two retired Coming Glass Works gaffers, he started blowing glass.
As noted, in the early 1960s there were no hot glass training courses available in the
United States, except those that taught the related activity of scientific lampworking.
By the fall of 1963 Billeci established an independent study course in glassblowing,
and by 1966 it had become institutionalized as an undergraduate course in the Alfred
art department.3 4 As it would turn out, this coincided with Littleton’s activities at the
University of Wisconsin. Perhaps because of Alfred’s long affiliation with clay over
glass or because of its connections with industry, these accomplishments did not
receive as much attention as Littleton’s did. Or perhaps this is attributable to the
persistence and durability of the Littleton myth.
Following on the successes of the Toledo workshops, Littleton instituted an
independent study course in glassblowing through the ceramics department at the
3 4 Susanne K. Frantz, Contemporary Glass: A World Survey from the Coming
Museum o f Glass (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989), 59.
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161
University of Wisconsin in the fall o f 1962. It was a groundbreaking course,
offered in the informal setting of Littleton’s pottery studio on his farm outside of
Madison. In the spring o f 1963 Littleton tried to secure funding from Coming Glass
Works to establish an independent art glassworking center and to continue the
Madison-based pilot glassworking program, but he was turned down. In the fall of
1963, however, the Department of Art and Art Education at the university accepted
Littleton's proposal to inaugurate “Art 176 Glassworking” as a graduate art class to
begin that September. The university accepted the plan with the proviso that funds
from outside of the university be found to purchase the equipment needed for the
studio. Once again Labino came to Littleton’s aid and arranged for Johns-Mansville
Fiber Glass to donate a thousand dollars and 2,400 pounds of #475 marbles to the
nascent program. Consistent in his preferences, Littleton designed the curriculum
around glassblowing, excluding other forming methodologies.
Soon other glassmaking opportunities developed. In 1966 and 1967 Labino
presented three workshops at his studio under the auspices of the Toledo Museum of
Art, School of Design. The museum also sponsored classes and built a studio
specifically designed for glassblowing. To further respond to the increased interest in
glass, the museum opened a new gallery in 1969 to house its collection o f ancient
glass and nineteenth-century factory-made glass. A joint art program was established
between the University of Toledo and the museum’s School of Design with Fritz
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162
Dreisbach (b. 1941) as the glass instructor.3 5 Dreisbach remembers that there
were many workshops, a lot o f glassblowing, and few exhibitions or collectors. One
year later Philadelphia College of Art inserted glass into the ceramics department,
and future glass artists William Bernstein, Dan Dailey, and Wayne Filan built the
first glass furnace.3 6
All of these programs required teachers, and the newly minted glass artists
gladly took the jobs for three reasons. First, ever sensitive to the vulnerability of
object-based art to caprices o f art fashion, they wanted glass to achieve a permanent
place within the university hierarchy. Second, teaching offered access to bigger and
more sophisticated kilns and other technical equipment than they could not afford in
their own studios. And third, teaching provided the financial security of a regular
paycheck to balance the less-reliable income from the sale of their work. These were
some of the reasons that even those who had slender credentials and minimal training
were tempted to accept the newly established posts.3 7
3 5 Susanne K. Frantz, op cit. Interviews with Norman Schulman and Charles
Gunther, 57.
3 6 Roland Jahn, “Future of Education” The Glass Art Society Journal, (1987): 82.
3 7 The states with the greatest number of glass craftsmen (California and Wisconsin)
had the largest number of universities offering glass courses. A partial listing of glass
programs in the United States are: Alfred University (1965) New York Experimental
Glass Workshop (1979), Rhodes Island School of Design (1966), Massachusetts
College of Art (1974) Penland School (1969). See Lee Nordress Objects USA, 13-14,
passim, and Rose Slivka Rose Slivka, “The Art/Craft Connection: Personal, Critical
and Historical Odyssey,” Eloquent Object: The Evolution o f American Art in Craft
Media since 1945 (Tulsa: The Philbrook Museum o f Art, 1987), 76-78, 98, and
Andrew Phelan, “50 Years at the School for American Craftsmen” Ceramics
Monthly, 43, No.2 (Feburary 1995): 51-56, and Michael Taylor, “Glass Education in
the USA,” Neues Glas 3, (1989): 232-238.
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163
As Littleton had taught most of the studio glassblowers during the first
few years following the Toledo Workshops, it was Littleton's students who became
the permanent faculty members. While they do not represent all o f those who
founded or took over glass programs, their large numbers served to perpetuate a
mythology that stresses the singularity of Littleton’s contribution and the privileges
glassblowing. A typical example would be Toledo attendee Tom McGlauchlin (b.
1934), who settled at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. He remembers that he
“came away bursting with enthusiasm for this new material— couldn’t wait to get
started on my own. I remember that when I got a job teaching glass in Iowa in 1964,
33
I had about six hours of glassblowing experience.”
Further, generational linkages between teachers and students were established
as other Toledo Workshop attendees and those who had studied with Littleton settled
into university positions. These direct linkages among the studio glass artists can be
easily traced: Marvin Lipofsky, while working at University of California, Berkeley,
taught Dick Marquis (b. 1945), who eventually settled at University o f California,
Los Angeles; Norman Schulman (b. 1935) founded the program at the Rhode Island
School of Design (RISD) in the fall of 1965 and was soon assisted there by then
Littleton’s graduate student Dale Chihuly (b. 1941); Dan Dailey (b. 1947) also
studied with Chihuly and went on to found the glass program at Massachusetts
College of Art in Boston; Thermon Statom (b. 1953) also attended Pilchuck Glass
3 8 Tom McGlauchlin, “ Panel: Where Were You in ’62?” The Glass Art Society
Journal, (1993): 18.
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Center and RISD with Chihuly and headed the glass program at the University of
California, Los Angeles for two years until its closure in 1985.
This close - knit studio glass community perpetuated the attitude belief that if
your glass education could not be traced back to study with Littleton or one of his
students, you were an “outsider.” Glass artist Richard Posner refers to this as “ the
‘LDS’ syndrome,” defined as the Littleton-Lipofsky disease where sufferers express
a wrong-headedness, leading to a cult-like selection of artists (glassblowers) as
genuine.”3 9 As glassmakers and teachers working in other methodologies and not
trained by the first generation of Littleton followers have emerged, this hegemony
has receded.
As these teachers fanned out in to universities and colleges, issues concerning
glass curriculum and how to teach it came to the fore. With Littleton’s personal
teaching style and his preference for blowing setting the standard, the early glass
teachers took what they had learned under their brief tutelage with Littleton and
shared it with their new students.4 0 The result was uneven and in the early years
often did not include philosophical inquiry. Henry Halem, later professor of art at
Kent State and founder of its glass program, remembers that his year long study
3 9 Conversation with the author August 8, 1998, Los Angeles.
4 0 Interestingly, the development o f studio glass in Australia followed the same arc
as seen in the United States, but in a shorter time frame. One distinct step forward
occurred when German-trained, kiln-form artist Klaus Moje moved there and took
over the program at Canberra. Instead of focusing on technique as a starting point for
teaching, he asked his students what they wanted to make and would guide them in
acquiring the appropriate technique. Conversation with Moje, Asheville, North
Carolina, 1995. For the complete story o f the Australian studio glass movement see
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consisted only of demonstrations by Littleton, followed by individual students
struggling on their own to use blowpipes to achieve similar results. Due to this trial
and error method much o f “[w]hat we did at first was the result of ineptitude,
misinformation, and all.” 4 1 But the “works [produced] had a vitality and an
enthusiasm” remembers artist and teacher Mark Peiser.42 For all of these programs,
the need for new equipment also shaped the course work, so that the invention of
basic hardware became an integral part o f the glass experience.
During the first decade, this lack of sophisticated art education, coupled with
the realities of hot glass forming, resulted in formally naive work. Based on the
“bubbles” that naturally form when glass is blown on a blowpipe, the works
produced displayed a lack o f formal complexity that permitted enthusiasm to lead the
way. Although the desire to make art was the professed goal, the end product was far
from it. This persisted because techniques for glassmaking were complex and (at the
time) required rediscovery. Also, the teachers did not have a grounding in the long
history of theoretical issues relating to artmaking, and consequently, little attention
was given to theoretical or content issues. That would have to wait until the next
decade.
The second avenue for a glassmaking education was provided by the seasonal
glass workshops and courses offered in established craft school settings across the
Noris Ioannou, Australian Studio Glass: The Movement, Its Makers and Their Art
(New South Wales: Craftsman House and G-B Arts International, 1995), 34 - 39.
4 1 Henry Halem, “Glass Education?” The Glass Art Society Journal (1993): 30-34.
4 2 Mark Peiser, “Reflections,” Glass Art Society Journal (1995): 60.
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166
country. These workshops, often held for a few weeks in the summer, were
casual and informal and provided intensive learning opportunities. Most attendees
were students who were beyond or not yet connected to university degree programs.
Access was easy. Peiser remembers the casual screening he received in 1967 when
he applied for the first hot glass artist residency at Penland. When Peiser asked if he
could become a resident, although he had little training in glass, director Bill Brown
“nonchalantly said ‘sure,’” and Peiser joined the team.4 3 Typical o f these programs
were (and are) the Haystack Mountain School o f Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine; The
Penland School of Handicrafts, North Carolina; and Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale. With few requirements and with personal compatibility of primary
importance, a tightly woven glass community developed.
The third major means of disseminating glassmaking knowledge was through
the workshops held by artist-teachers who traveled both nationally and
internationally. Haystack and Penland became regular stops on the workshop circuit.
Another pattern, inspired by Willson’s and Littleton’s European experiences,
developed when visits to Italian and German glasshouses became part of glass
culture. Dick Marquis (b. 1945) received a Fulbright-Hay Fellowship to study
traditional techniques at Salviati & Compagnia and later worked at Veninie C.
Marvin Lipofsky became a “glass ombudsmen” to Europe for his work at small
4 3 Beverly Copeland, “Glass Focus Interview: Mark Peiser,” Glass Focus (December
1989/January 1990): 11.
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factories in Holland and Italy.44 These international contacts facilitated cross
pollination of the exuberant and casual American style and the highly skilled but
more staid European glass practice.
Part of what made these glassmaking opportunities so appealing was the
impromptu and collaborative spirit engendered by the actual process o f blowing
glass. Glassblowing is a time-critical activity. Therefore, the various tasks relating to
forming objects are broken down into discrete acts that are then carried out quickly
by each specialist. This meant that each participant had a teamwork relationship with
all of the others, that was integral and subservient to the process. Evident at the
Toledo workshops, this quality established the tone in the early days o f glass and
became part of the “glass lifestyle.” With the furnaces running twenty-four hours a
day, experimentation, teamwork, and close quarters fostered abiding collegial and
interpersonal connections.
Contemporaneous societal realities also influenced the development of this
lifestyle. The popular quest for alternative lifestyles, a particular fascination of
middle-class teenagers of the 1960s, made the twenty-four-hour-a-day aspect of
glassmaking seem beguiling. This, attached to an interest in communal living,
rejection of parental authority, and the breaking of the perceived restrictions of
4 4 For example Marvin Lipofsky, one of Littleton’s first students, is credited with
sharing the American openness to experimentation with European and Asian
glassmakers through his travels to glass factories throughout the 1970and 1980s.
Conversation with Lipofsky, Asheville, May 5, 1995 as quoted in Martha Drexler
Lynn, Masters o f Contemporary Glass: Selections from the Glick Collection
(Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art and Indiana University Press, 1997), 90 -
99.
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168
middle-class life, made glassmaking the perfect platform from which to explore
all notions o f counter-culture.4 5 The formation o f this distinctive lifestyle led to the
founding o f the seasonal glass center at Pilchuck in 1971 4 6
The Pilchuck Glass Center (later renamed the Pilchuck Glass School) became
the premier place for artists to meet, work, and explore technique and content. And
soon it developed into a place for collectors to meet artists and watch work being
made. Pilchuck resulted from a collaboration between glass artists Dale Chihuly and
Ruth Tamara and collectors John H. and Anne Gould Hauberg. The Haubergs
wanted to start a craft school associated with the Pacific Northwest Arts Center.
Chihuly persuaded them to provide him with land on a tree farm north of Seattle
where he could explore his innovative educational plans for creating a school that
4 5 One of the key influences on the evolution o f clay from its utilitarian beginnings to
becoming expressive art medium was the use o f drugs. While at Otis in Los Angeles
during the mid-1950s, Peter Voulkos and his students worked around the clock and
fueled their sessions with peyote and jazz. See Mary MacNaughton “Innovation in
Clay: The Otis Era 1954 - 1960,” Revolution in Clay: The Marer Collection o f
Contemporary Ceramics (Claremont, California: Scripps College and the University
of Washington Press, 1994), 53 - 57.
4 6 Another reality that affected glass was the expansion o f the unpopular war in
Vietnam. Opposition to the war led college-age men to resist being drafted against
their will. This fostered an anti-establishment sentiment against all things related to
conventional society, and soon choosing an “alternative profession” in the arts (and
even more the crafts) became a badge of independence and individuality. Being a
hippie meant dropping out o f conventional society and “living free.” This lifestyle
choice had received an unwitting boost from a loophole in the draft laws that
permitted those enrolled in college to be deferred from the draft. Glass artist
Lipofsky freely admits that he prolonged his art studies and got a Master’s in Fine
Arts to avoid being drafted. Ironically this delay positioned him to receive an offer to
found the glass program at the University o f California, Berkeley, in 1964. Thus,
draft dodging and a desire for a counterculture lifestyle benefited the glass
movement. Conversation with author, Asheville, North Carolina, May 5, 1995.
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bridged the worlds o f craft and art. Established as a residential summer school for
glassmakers, it appealed to the desire for an alternative lifestyle, free of the
establishment values of the older generation. “We were hippies, Okay? People have
to understand that. No watches, no underwear, no nothing.” remembers glass artist
Toots Zynsky (b. 1951) of the early days work at the Pilchuck.4 7 Learning to make
art with glass, rejecting bourgeois rules, and living an anti-establishment lifestyle
were irresistible and became part o f the lore both o f Pilchuck and the glass
movement in general4 8
Glass programs had penetrated the university and craft world sufficiently that in
1973 Glass Art Magazine listed seventy educational programs in its "Guide to Glass
Instruction," most of them resident within arts departments. This expansion had a
profound effect on the establishment of a critical mass of artists devoted to learning
about, producing and promoting studio glass. Most importantly, study side-by-side
with other art majors within universities developed art ambitions in studio glass
4 7 This counterculture aspect was one that would profoundly effect Dale Chihuly and
the organization of the Pilchuck Glass Center of Seattle in the late 1970s when it
struggled to decide whether to be a glassmaking center or a residential commune.
See Tina Oldknow, Pilchuck: A Glass School (Seattle: Pilchuck Glass School and
the University of Washington Press, 1996), 59, 83 - 109.
4 8 The shift from the earnest craftmaker of the mid-1960s to the anti-establishment
glass artist of the 1970s can be tracked through attire. At the 1964 First World
Congress of Craftsmen the male attendees are pictured wearing suits and ties with
the women in dresses and heels. Only the occasional piece of ethnically inspired
jewelry betrays that these folks were not bankers or other professionals. By the
1970s bandanas, jeans, boots and tee shirts were the uniform of choice. See
conference report for the American Craftsmen’s Council’s The First World Congress
o f Craftsmen held at Columbia University, New York, June 8-19, 1964, published in
1965.
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artists. Subjected to the same intellectual demands made on painting or sculpture
majors, this new generation, although working in a traditionally crafts-oriented
medium, came to expect high-art-world rewards. This ambition led in the 1980s to
their looking to the high art world for marketing practice, collecting strategies, and
museum interaction. But in order to appreciate folly this transformation, a look at the
preceding developments is necessary.
Marketing Early American Studio Glass
The pattern o f market formation in the craft world follows a uniform path. In
broad terms, after World War II crafts were sold directly by the craftsman to friends,
acquaintances, and those living within a local radius. This implied reasonable prices
and a one-to-one interaction between the maker and the consumer. Then
intermediaries appeared in the form of gift or craft shops that sought to expand the
retail market for these handcrafted items to include an anonymous, general public.
This system was joined by a craftsman- initiated network of regional and seasonal
fairs that returned the craftsman to direct sales interaction. These fairs significantly
expanded the audience for craft items.4 9 By mid-century crafts had also appeared in
4 9 Today these regional craft fairs are not associated with the high contemporary
crafts that are the focus of this study. As will be shown, high contemporary glass has
moved into urban single-medium galleries. For a discussion of the general
phenomenon as it affects musicians and some plastic artists, see Howard S. Becker,
Art Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 93 - 130, 286 - 343. For
a discussion of lower quality crafts and their market, see Joel Samuel Yudklen The
Viability o f Craft in Advanced Industrial Society: Case Study o f the Contemporary
Crafts Movement in the United States. (Ph.D. Diss. Stanford University, 1987).
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171
the housewares sections of department stores as alternatives to the perceived
conformity of post-war, mass-produced household goods. Next, multimedia craft
shops appeared, often mirroring the selection of media seen in the museum
exhibitions of the period. Finally by the 1970s, as a testament to the expansion of the
market, spurred by the increase in number of makers and those who wanted to buy
their wares, galleries dedicated exclusively to a specific craft media, now termed
“craft arts,” were opened. For clay, textiles, and wood this process took several
decades, with clay the only one to develop a network o f single-medium galleries.
Studio glass moved through this process in less than a decade, and by 1972 had its
first urban gallery dedicated exclusively to glass. This growth reflects the
dramatically increased number of glass artists (the result of wider educational
opportunities) and the concomitant development o f a committed collecting public.
To fully appreciate what would occur in the following period 1975 to 1990, this first
decade needs review. While listing and reviewing the activities of all studio glass
retailing outlets is outside the scope of this study, a representative few will be
examined to elucidate patterns common to all.
The earliest market for studio glass was the direct one that occurred in the
unstructured settings in or around the artist’s studios. Acquaintances would know of
the work, as would colleagues, and might offer to purchase items as they were
fabricated.5 0 After Littleton and his followers began producing glass in their studios,
5 0 The Marer Collection of ceramics was created in a similar manner. Fred Marer
spent time with the ceramists at the (then) Los Angeles County Art Institute (later
Otis Art Institute), providing coffee and encouragement. When the works came out
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172
they sold their wares at open houses, often staffed by family (Fig. 22). Works
were displayed on planks of wood or on the ground and priced just a few dollars per
item, reflecting the low demand for the material. Littleton remembers that at first
traditional pricing practices from ceramics informed the price structure for glass,
noting that “I’ve counseled my students in glass all along. When the pottery students
were selling five dollar pots, the glass students were selling fifty dollar
paperweights.... It got off on a different foot, because I thought they should not be
giving it away.”5 1 The higher prices suggested by Littleton became the standard,
justified by the higher cost of running a glass studio and spurred by the higher art
ambitions developing within the movement.5 2
of the kiln he would buy them for a few dollars. See Mary MacNaughton, ed.
Revolution in Clay: The Marer Collection o f Contemporary Ceramics (Claremont,
California: Scripps College and the University of Washington Press, 1994) and Kay
Koeninger and Douglas Humble, editors, Earth and Fire: The Marer Collection o f
Contemporary Ceramics, Catalogue o f the Permanent Collection (Claremont,
California: Galleries of the Claremont Colleges, 1984).
5 1 Harvey K. Littleton, American Craftspeople Project: The Reminiscences o f Harvey
Littleton, (Columbia University, Oral History Office, 1988), 21. The low pricing for
work by those not accepted by the glass gallery system is still in place. A 7 V z inch
Glen Lukens 1950s glass plate was estimated to be worth about $100. in a collectors
guide book in 1997. In contrast his clay pieces sell for multiple thousands. See
Donald-Brian Johnson and Leslie Pina, Higgins, Adventures in Glass (Atglen, Pa.:
Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 1997), 60, and accession records of the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art for glass objects M.90.1, M.90.40 and M. 83.235 and clay
objects M.87.1.85 and M.90.82.31.
5 2 Issues revolving around the pricing of work have long been a subject to dispute in
the craft movement. William Straite Murray (1881-1962) contested Bernard Leach’s
(1887-1979) penchant for pricing his vessels inexpensively. Murray believed that his
vessels were “art” and as such should be priced on par with paintings. But Murray’s
timing was unfortunate as he took this stand in 1929, and when the Depression
resulted in a downturn in the market, his high prices ruined his business. See Ian
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173
Another marketing apparatus developed at the seasonal and weekend craft
fairs. Here items made by the hobbyist and nascent glass artists were sold side-by-
side, displayed randomly on tables. The hobbyists would participate if a fair was held
nearby; the committed artisan would travel from location to location. Prices were
low, and it was difficult to earn a living from these sales alone. Peiser remembers
managing to survive by selling his small handblown vessels for $7.50 each at local
craft fairs in North Carolina during the late 1960s. Fortunately for him, by 1974
prices for his blown glass had increased to $ 100.5 3 This escalation continued as
noted by Frances Higgins in 1989 when he stated that “[n]ot too long ago we had a
show at a place called Fifty/50 [New York City]. We sold things that we sold in the
‘50s for $15. we got $1,500. for them.” 5 4 These price increases indicate the growing
interest in the movement and the beginnings of a collecting community.
Bennett, British Twentieth-Century Studio Ceramics (London: Christopher Wood
Gallery, exhibition catalogue, 1980.)
5 3 Correspondence with the author, 1995. By comparison with the high art world,
records from Betty Parson’s New York gallery indicate that by 1952 Rothko’s
paintings were selling for $3,000 from their 1947 prices of $75 to $400. See Deirdre
Robson, “The Market for Abstract Expressionism: The Time Lag Between Critical
and Commercial Acceptance,” Archives o f American Art Journal 25, No. 3, (1985),
19-23. Also Oakland Museum, 1974 California Ceramics and Glass Competitive
Exhibition in the Oakland Museum (1974) for prices for clay and glass.
5 4 Frances Higgins, “Glass Focus Interview with Frances Higgins.” Glass Focus
(October/November, 1989) : 9. Littleton also remembers that just after World War II
his ceramics pots sold for twelve dollars each. See Harvey K. Littleton, American
Craftspeople Project: The Reminiscences o f Harvey Littleton (Columbia University,
Oral History Office, 1988), 21
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174
Fig. 22. Bess Littleton sitting at her husband’s sales booth late 1950s.
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176
Juried exhibitions also served as sales venues. Here, inclusion in the
exhibition seemed to confer value, but often, in fact, due to the limited number of
glass artists, the selection process was not rigorous. Typical o f this phenomena was
the Midwest Designer-Craftsman Fair inaugurated in 1954. This was followed by
the large, annual May Show in 1956 at The Cleveland Museum of Art, where Edris
Eckhardt was honored with a special award for her glass work. By the 1950s
regional and seasonal shows, sponsored by the American Craft Council (ACC)
served as both exhibition venues and wholesale/retail marketing centers, and they
were the most prestigious available.5 5 Each o f these shows helped to expose studio
glass to a new public.
Museums, through their shops and bookstores, also promoted sales - even
before studio glass entered their permanent collections. Edris Eckhardt spoke at the
First Annual Conference of American Craftsmen’s professional practices panel in
1957 and noted that
some o f the things that have happened in Pittsburgh have taken place in
Cleveland because of the policy and activity of the director of Cleveland
Museum .... we have several galleries which show the works of craftsmen .
. . . Last May more than $7,000. worth o f arts and crafts were sold to the
• 5 5
general public.. .We also have a sidewalk Annual at which we sell.
5 5 Open to members only, these shows occurred in six regions, nationally. They lasted
until the late 1970s. The organization of regional shows was abandoned because
ACC felt that single-media organizations were more effective than their multimedia
approach. Conversation with pioneering woodworker and ACC Emeritus Board
Member, Sam Maloof, March 1996, Alta Loma, California.
5 6 Edris Eckhardt, “Professional Practices in Enamels and Glass,” Asilomar: First
Annual Conference o f the American Craftsmen, (New York: American Craftsmen’s
Council, 1957), 144— 45.
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The level of concern about how to market their works was reflected in the range
of panels at the various craft conferences devoted to those issues. Clearly, with the
early artists seeking to move beyond “hobby status,” all strategies for creating
revenue were explored from informal sidewalk sales to formal galleries. 5 7
Studio glass, along with other crafts, appeared in upscale department stores
such as Bonniers, New York, Gump’s, San Francisco, and Bullock’s, Los Angeles.
Locally produced craft items were presented in the housewares department along
side decorative items and tableware made in Europe (usually Scandinavia.) As noted,
they were positioned as a counterpoint to the mass-produced goods that dominated
the market after World War II. Los Angeles collectors recount anecdotally that they
purchased plates and bowls made of slumped glass by Glen Lukens (1887 - 1967),
then a ceramics teacher at the University of Southern California, who experimented
with warm glass techniques.5 8 Ceramists Gertrud and Otto Natzler remember
5 7 An example of an early museum shop was the Gallery Shop at the Brooklyn
Museum of Art. By 1958 worldwide crafts (folk art) were displayed for sale. Carl
Fox, manager of the Shop notes that “[ejven in this country where there is no broad
folk craft tradition [«'c], we have found fine pieces in New Hampshire, Vermont,
Connecticut, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New Mexico — and we have yet to
cover all of the states or the remaining forty-two. What riches lie ahead for us and
the museum visitor ?” Carl Fox. “Brooklyn Museum’s Craft Shop.” Craft
Horizons, 17, No. 6 (November/December, 1958): 17. As will be discussed in Chapter
4, for the mid-level artisans who work in glass, these regional fairs still provide a
market outlet. They also serve to educate the public about nonfactory made
handcrafted items. The number of glass artists during from the 1962 to 1975 period
increased and eventually their production supported independent retailing.
5 8 Martha Drexler Lynn, “Clay Leads the Studio Crafts into the Art World,”
Contemporary Crafts and the Saxe Collection (Toledo Museum of Art, New York:
Hudson Hills Press, Inc. 1993) 90-99. Conversation with Lucke Thorensen in 1990
about her donation o f a 1940 glass plate by Glen Lukens to the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art (M.90.49).
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178
retailing their works along side Lukens’s at Bullock’s on Wilshire Boulevard in
Los Angeles.
But the most important craft outlet during the 1950s was America House in
New York. Featuring handcrafted material that ranged from traditional crafts to
contemporary crafts, and had begun in 1939 as the American Craftsmen’s
Cooperative Council. America House opened in 1941 at 44 West 53rd Street. The
stated credo was a simple one is “a simple one: to obtain greater recognition for the
creative work o f outstanding American craftsmen. The vitality of the crafts
movement in the United States is revealed in the presentations and sales the year
round;” it ended with a clear marketing ploy: “Catalogue on request.”5 9 Eventually
this shop became part of the larger publishing and museum structure of the American
Craft Museum (founded in 1956 as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts) and
American Craft magazine (formerly Craft Horizons).6 0
America House had a direct impact on studio glass. During the first World
Congress of Craftsmen held at Columbia University in New York, in 1964, glass
5 9 Founded by Aileen Vanderbilt Webb, America House sold high-quality crafts
made in other locales. Webb had a passion for the arts, and her father had on the
board o f the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Raised with Impressionist paintings at
home, Webb, like many craft devotees to come, was educated in the high arts but
chose to support the crafts because o f their perceived connection to fundamental
American values. In the 1920s after her marriage to Vanderbilt Webb, she studied
painting under Cecilia Beaux, enameling under Kathe Berl, and ceramics with
Maude Robinson. By the 1930s she had adopted the elevation of crafts in America as
her life’s work and established Putnam County Products, in New York, to provide a
marketing outlet for the dairy products and crafts produced by her neighbors.
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179
artist Joel Philip Myers’s work was featured in the window on 53rd Street across
from the conference. While glass was being discussed as a potential art form,
American House was offering a concrete example.
The significance of Webb's attempt to establish a retail outlet for handcrafted
work in New York City cannot be overlooked. New York, then in its early years of
its infatuation with European abstraction and modernism, was not as receptive to
crafts as rural settings were. By establishing this venue for crafts, Webb trumpeted
their existence and initiated the formidable task of expanding their availability.6 1
High street painting and sculpture galleries also began to take an interest in
the “new media” of glass.6 2 Lee Nordness, curator of the Objects: USA exhibition (to
6 0 Advertisement in Craft Horizons late 1940s. A gallery was opened even earlier in
Portland Oregon, in 1937. Doubtless there are other galleries, now forgotten, that
did not have continuing impact on the national movement.
6 1 The issue of urban versus rural, as already noted, is important to studio glass. It
was also important to other media at the time. For a detailed effect on the St Louis
art market during the same years see Stuart Plattner, High Art Down Home: An
Economic Ethnography o f a Local Art Market (Chicago: The University o f Chicago
Press, 1996) especially 6 -4 7 , 164-193, and Erika Doss, Benton, Pollock, and the
Politics o f Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1991).
6 2 The term “new media” has a specific art historical meaning. Ironically, it is not a
meaning that applies to glass. Indeed, glass is only a “new media” to the high art
world; it has been known to decorative arts experts and classical scholars since
ancient times. The high art world embrace of glass can in part be tied to its general
acceptance of media other than painting and sculpture during the 1960s, due, in part,
to the demands of a rapidly expanding demand for art goods.
6 3 Paul and Elmerina Parkman, “The Rise of Glass Art: A Personal View,” The
Glass Art Society Journal (1991), 44-48. In 1972 Sally Hansen changed the name of
her Sarah Eveleth Antiques gallery to Glass Gallery and featured works by Littleton
and Robert Fritz.
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180
be reviewed below) and the owner of the Lee Nordness Gallery, began to show
works by studio glass artists in 1969. Previously known for his painting and
sculpture exhibitions, in the 1950s he opened a larger space to celebrate the gallery’s
tenth anniversary in 1968. Proclaiming that glass artists were "America's leading
object makers," Nordness displayed their work next to painting and sculpture.
Unfortunately, this breakthrough in artistic parity did not start a trend among New
York art galleries, and the next marketplace developments took place in galleries
outside o f New York.
One such gallery, adjacent to an urban center was Appalachia Spring in
Georgetown, near Washington, D.C. In 1970 it featured a decanter by Billy
Bernstein for $26. and a Peiser miniature vase for $17.6 3 Displays combined fine art
gallery presentations of individual items alongside mock-ups of living rooms,
decorated with handcrafted works. This blending of high art display strategies and
domestic applications expresses the confused identity o f studio glass (and all crafts)
vis-a-vis art.6 4
Galleries that supported studio glass began to appear. Among these
were the rural-based Habatat Gallery (with its first location in Dearborn, Michigan,
joined later by one in Boca Raton, Florida). Opened in 1971 by Ferdinand Hampson
and Thomas Boone, it started as a multimedia craft gallery and did not switch
exclusively to glass until a few years later. In order to create excitement about the
6 4 While typical of this earlier period, these display strategies and their mixed
message continues today in craft galleries and gift shops outside of the large urban
centers o f New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
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181
medium, Habatat inaugurated an annual invitational exhibition series in 1973 and
featured 12 glassmakers. An account of the gallery's second annual Glass National in
1974 described opening night as “crowded with collectors buying fast and
furiously— even the $175 pieces!” 6 5 While not on a par with the prices garnered by
painters, they were an improvement over the amounts fetched by Peiser just three
years earlier and reflected the emerging “collectable” status that glass was assuming.
Another was the New York gallery to evolve into a dedicated studio glass gallery:
Heller Gallery, founded in 1971. The Contemporary Art Glass Group, New York, a
joint project by Douglas Heller and Joshua Rosenblatt was the one of the first single
medium glass galleries. As an expression of their cutting-edge approach and their
familiarity with the movement, participants in these national sales exhibitions were
drawn from the members o f the newly formed artist’s group, Glass Art Society. 6 6
These galleries and others that sprang up in Los Angeles and Chicago became the
6 5 Ferdinand Hampson, State o f the Art (Dearborn, Michigan: Habatat Galleries,
1984).
6 6 The Glass Art Society grew out o f an affiliation of glassblowers who were also
involved with the National Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts (N.C.E.C.A.).
In 1971 after the N.C.E.C.A conference in Toronto, small groups of glassblowers
were invited to Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina by director William
Brown. A small grant from the American Crafts Council enabled the eighteen
participants to attend the workshop held April 4 — 6, 1971. While there Fritz
Dreisbach, Mark Peiser, and William Bernstein led the workshop and elected Mark
Peiser chairman of the group. The next year another workshop was held and twenty
glassblowers attended. The groups decided to formally organize into a nonprofit
entity and elected Henry Halem the first president of the newly minted Glass Art
Society (G.A.S.) The choosing of this name and its acronym was not accidental. The
all-male, hot and dirty world o f the glassblower along with the faintly scatological
contemporary colloquialism whereby good experiences were referred to as “a gas!”
made the choice a natural. For a complete history of the Glass Art Society see
“Chronology,” Glass Art Society Journal (1995), 102 - 115.
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marketing venues o f choice for glass artists. 6 7 By the late 1970s a staggering
number of galleries featuring glass had opened, changed names, and closed their
doors. The developments from 1975 - 1990 will be covered in the next chapter.
Writing about Studio Glass : 1941 - 1975
In order for the support structures of the marketplace and then a collecting
community to form, information about studio glass needed to reach a public beyond
those connected by direct contact or word of mouth. This is usually accomplished
through the written word, but from 1962 to the end o f the 1970s studio glass was
hampered by having no periodical and only a few books devoted exclusively to it.
While such written materials would increase dramatically after the 1970s (and will
be covered in the next chapter), the items that did exist before that date will be
examined here.
For the glass practitioner, potential collector and inquisitive scholar of the
1950s and 1960s, books or magazines were a logical place to look for up-to-date
information. But only the multimedia craft magazine Craft Horizons provided this
6 7 While galleries and museum exhibitions provided legitimization of the new glass
and spurred the market, most works made and collected in the 1960s and early 1970s
were vessels. Many collectors, however, came to favor the increasingly prevalent
abstract and figurative work and to consider the vessel passe. As they became more
interested in emulating fine art collectors, they found the taint of functionality that
tied glass to its utilitarian roots, a burden. This shift in attitude will be discussed in
the next chapter.
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service.6 8 With much of the focus in the magazine on technique, early articles
featured descriptions and practical tips over incisive analysis or critiques. Typical o f
these were the Earl McCutchen 1955 piece about fusing glass scraps in a kiln and the
Dido Smith report of 1956 on Edris Eckhardt's experiments with re-creating Roman
gold glass. In 1960 Craft Horizons published a two-part series on ancient glass
forming by the chemist Frederick Schuler.6 9 These essays gave tantalizing hints
about glass technology but were actually based on speculation about ancient
techniques, not real experience.7 0
After the 1962 Toledo workshops, the situation improved and more reliable
articles began appearing regularly. In 1963 Dido Smith wrote about Littleton, and he,
in turn, reflecting on his exposure to European glassmakers, published an article
about the work of Erwin Eisch (German b. 1927) the Bavarian glass artist and his
friend. While coverage increased during the 1970s, the number o f glass articles
compared with the number of articles about ceramics was still dramatically fewer. In
1979 when American Craft was redesigned with a more contemporary image and
introduced full-page color illustrations and advertisements, the visual appeal of glass
could finally be made apparent, and this helped to develop a collecting public.
6 8 Craft Horizons was founded to aid the amateur hobbyist by sharing information
about how to make crafts during leisure time.
6 9 Frederick Schuler, "Ancient Glassmaking Techniques," Craft Horizons 20, No. 2
(March/April, 1960): 33-37; and "Ancient Glass Blowing," Craft Horizons 20, No. 6,
(November/December. 1960): 38-41.
7 0 Earl McCutchen, "Glass Molding: Experimenting on a Low Budget," Craft Horizons
15, No. 3, (May-June, 1955): 38-50; Dido Smith, "Gold Glass: An Ancient Technique
Rediscovered," Craft Horizons 16, No. 6 (December, 1956): 12-15.
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184
Early books about contemporary glass offered technical advice or
generalized history of glass, with an occasional survey of contemporary work. As
noted, information about glassblowing was only available in industrial manuals,
among them Samuel R. Scholes's reference for engineers and technologists,
Handbook o f the Glass Industry (1941), which Littleton had consulted in his early
work. Fay Tooley's Handbook o f Glass Manufacture (1953) offered practical advice
as did Kay Kinney’s Glass Craft: Designing, Forming, Decorating (1962), which
was written for the amateurs and provided advice about glass slumping.
Consequently, when the second 1962 Toledo Glass Workshop published its account
of the seminar activities, including technical data, material resources, and guidelines
for glassblowing, it made a significant contribution.'1 In the historical genre, Ada
Polak wrote a still-venerated history of glass entitled Modem Glass in 1962.7 2
Typical o f the contemporary surveys was Ray and Lee Grover’s Contemporary Art
Glass (1975) in which brief sketches of the ninety-eight featured artists were placed
along side pictures of their work. 7 3 Incipient collectors had only these modest guides
as reference.
The two most influential books of the period were written by Harvey
Littleton and Dominick Labino. Labino’s Visual Art in Glass (1968) surveyed the
7 1 Glass Workshop Report (Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, 1962).
7 2 Kay Kinney, Glass Craft: Designing, Forming, Decorating (Philadelphia: Clinton
Company, 1962), and Ada Polak, Modem Glass (New York: Thomas Yoseloff
Publisher, 1962).
7 3 Ray and Lee Grover, Contemporary Art Glass (New York: Crown, 1975).
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185
history of glassmaking for the layman from a technological point o f view. One
chapter entitled "The Artist and Glass" recounted the recent developments in
twentieth-century American glass, including a four- page epilogue devoted to the
Toledo Workshops. Labino’s sense of glass history and focus on technique is
indicated by the organization of the book.
Two years later Littleton wrote Glassblowing: A Search fo r Form (1971) and
framed his discussion within the methodology of glassblowing; with the majority of
the book is dedicated to the nature of glass, tools for forming, techniques and safety
guidelines - each topic accompanied by photographs. In the preface Littleton boldly
states that the “book is both a guide and a revivalist manifesto” for the artist who
wishes to explore the artistic potential of glass made within a studio setting.7 4 While
this aspect of the book is the most quoted, it is interesting that more pages were
devoted to the sharing of technical data than extolling the importance of glass art.
For the next decade this work served as the primary text for how to blow in a studio
setting and the most coherent statement about the potential of glass.
7 4 Dominick Labino, Visual Art In Glass (Dubuque, Iowa: William C. Brown, 1968);
Harvey K. Littleton, Glassblowing: A Search fo r Form (New York: Van Nostrand,
Reinhold, 1971), 6. A review of Littleton’s book states that its “aim is to present the
philosophy o f an author who is a key figure in the second half o f the twentieth
century.” In the same review Littleton is taken to task for “loose” terminology relating
to devitrifying versus weathering. Craft Horizons 32, No. 3 (June 1972): 10, 69.
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186
The Objects USA Exhibition of 1969 and the Early Collectors
Within a world as compact as the glass community, it is possible for a few
exhibitions and a few collectors to exert profound influence, and this was particularly
true during the first decade following the Toledo Workshops. In those years several
key exhibitions, both multimedia and devoted exclusively to glass, were mounted.
Early collectors began to emerge, and their motivations and styles o f collecting
provided a blueprint for those who would later enter the field.
Most studio glass exhibited in museums during the 1950s and 1960s was
positioned within larger survey shows. Chief among these exhibitions was The
Coming Museum of Glass international glass survey exhibition Glass 1959,
discussed above. This exhibition remained the most important one, until the
multimedia Objects: USA exhibition of 1969. Funded and organized by the S. C.
Johnson Company of Racine, Wisconsin, the exhibition was curated by Lee
Nordness of Lee Nordness Galleries, New York City. The exhibited objects were
selected from the Johnson Collection of Contemporary Crafts, included all craft
media, and featured 24 glass artists. Objects were assembled to “focus attention on
the quality and originality that have taken the crafts revival out of the realm of folk
art and into the world of contemporary art.” The exhibition opened at the Museum of
Contemporary Crafts, New York (later American Craft Museum). Unlike similar
exhibitions since, it garnered a glowing review in the upper middle-class, New
Yorker magazine, which declared that “an art school aura pervades the exhibition,
but it’s a different kind of art school from any we’ve known in the past, less earnest
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and arty, more easy and tolerable of idiosyncrasy.”7 5 The exhibition’s most
significant contribution was its three-hundred and sixty page, hardbound catalogue
wherein Nordness presented a coherent history of American craft that sought to place
it within a framework of societal cause and effect. By today’s standards the entries
for the artists look thin, but at the time it could be considered a scholarly publication,
and, as will be shown, the exhibition increased the audience for glass and directly
spurred the development of a glass collecting community. 7 6
Additional exhibition activity by two museums with a long factory-based
commitment to glass also expanded interest. The Coming Museum of Glass,
Coming, New York (established in 1951) and The Toledo Museum o f Art both took
advantage of their connections to industry to provide financial support for
maintaining and expanding their permanent collections of glass, as well as
undertaking an active exhibition program that supported scholarship relating to glass
from all ages. Early exhibitions at The Coming Museum featured works made by
proto-studio glass artists, including a show of fused-glass pictures by Ruth Maria
Kilby in 1966 and Edris Eckhardt's kiln-fused work in 1968. Labino was honored in
7 5 Unattributed flap copy from the catalogue for Objects: USA (New York: Viking
Press, 1969).
7 6 The crafts presented were enamel, ceramics, glass, metal, jewelry, plastic, mosaic,
wood and fiber. Next to wood, glass was the smallest section. Each artist was
highlighted with pictures of one or two works and an artist’s statement.
A contemporary review of the exhibition exults the craftsman as
“pacesetters” who “emphasize the newest directions and inventions of the creative
leaders in the major medium categories.” See Robert Hilton Simmons, “The Johnson
Collection: Objects USA,” Craft Horizons 29, No. 6 (November/December 1969):
24 - 27, 66.
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188
1969 with a retrospective exhibition of his post-1964 work. Also in 1969 and
1970, Aiffed University faculty members Andre Billeci and Eric Hilton received solo
exhibitions. In 1977 Professor Robert Willson o f the University o f Miami, Florida,
showed his hot-worked glass sculpture in Coming as part o f a three-year
international tour. These exhibitions were joined by the development of a permanent
collection of historical glass and helped to provide studio glass with museum
validation by expanding its audience. 7 7
In 1966 the Toledo Museum of Art mounted the first Toledo Glass National
survey show. It featured works by 42 glassb lowers and one warm glassmaker, proto
studio glass artist Edris Eckhardt. In 1968 the second Toledo Glass National
included 57 glassblowers and traveled nationally. By 1970, when it was time for the
third survey, the growing number of glassmakers forced the museum to change the
format to an invitational with only 11 artists presented. After it traveled, the series
was discontinued.
In 1972, instead of a fourth Toledo Glass National, The Toledo Museum of
Art in conjunction with the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City co
organized the traveling invitational American Glass Now. Displaying the work of 33
glassmakers, the exhibition illustrated the advances in glassmaking that had occurred
in the previous decade. Technically more varied and accomplished, the improved
7 7 Equally important to both private collectors and institution was Coming’s
establishment of an international slide collection in 1977. Entitled Contemporary
Glass (changed in 1980 to New Glass Review), its list of objects and their makers
was made available to the public on microfiche. In 1980 the format changed to a
printed volume, and the New Glass Review evolved into a valuable documentary
periodical that featured museum acquisitions and new artists.
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189
craftsmanship permitted additional formal possibilities, with glass moving from
the vessel toward a sculptural identity. In time, works would feature other media, and
the scale would increase. These trends continued and eventually brought glass into
contention for inclusion within the high art world.
The development of a collecting community was spurred by the 1974
Museum o f Contemporary Crafts exhibition The Collector which presented six
private collections. The glass works were chosen from the Sy and Theo Portnoy
collection o f Scarsdale, New York. The Portnoys had begun collecting (and then
selling) glass after seeing the Objects: USA exhibition. This institutional validation
that placed the emphasis on the collector over the artist proved compelling.
Regional exhibitions also exerted influence on the development of the
collecting audience. In 1958 California lampworker John Burton (1894-1985) had a
one-person exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum. Two significant survey exhibitions
of studio glass occurred in 1966. The National Invitational Glass Exhibition at San
Jose State College was a transitional show in which some proto-studio glass artists
(John Burton, Edris Eckhardt, Earl McCutchen, and Priscilla Manning Porter) were
shown along with the new generation of glassblowers (Robert Fritz, Dominick
Labino, Marvin Lipofsky, Joel Philip Myers, and Norman Schulman). This
exhibition made it clear that the drama of glassblowing easily overshadowed all
other forming methodologies.7 8 In 1974 Western Carolina University, in
7 8 Glassblowing has a live action appeal that benefited from the 1960s interest in art-
making staged as “happenings.” Much of the success of the early glass work at
Pilchuck Glass Center is related to this phenomenon. See Tina Oldknow, Pilchuck: A
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190
Cullowhee, held a regional biennial exhibition that would eventually be known as
North Carolina Glass.
After 1962, interest in contemporary glass as a collectable increased.
Attracting attention first because o f its visual and technical novelty, the beauty of the
medium stimulated immediate appreciation, even to the untrained eye. With
technical execution still inconsistent, many early works were casually crafted, but
even inadequately crafted works elicited enthusiasm from glass collectors as the
visual appeal of the material became equated with aesthetic merit.7 9 This led objects
that might have been considered unacceptable in another media to be deemed
appropriate for display in museums and sold in galleries.
As usually happens with new areas of collecting, before orthodoxies have
been established, collections are built more as accumulations than as expressions of
connoisseurship. During this early period of studio glass this tendency was more the
result o f the quality o f work available than o f an untrained eye. An example is the
collection amassed by John and Anne Gould Hauberg between 1968 and 1972. What
appears to the casual observer to be a group of shapeless glass bubbles was in fact a
Glass School (Seattle: Pilchuck and the University of Washington Press, 1996), 105,
passim.
7 9 It can be argued that this tolerance of casual craftsmanship, on the surface the
opposite of what craft is about, was the result of the acceptance of the Funk
sensibility, especially in clay, that occurred during the early and late 1960s. Robert
Ameson’s imperfectly formed typewriters, toilets, and bottles helped break the focus
on fine craftsmanship for artists working in craft media. Gary Knox Bennett would
do the same for woodworking in 1979.
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191
rare collection o f early pieces made during the first years of the Pilchuck Glass
Center (Fig. 23).
In the first decade buyers o f studio glass came from a variety of backgrounds.
Some were glassmakers, others came to collecting from other media - either craft or
high art - and still others first saw work in exhibitions or galleries. Typical of the first
group was Robert Florian, a high school art teacher, who created a collection while
participating in workshops at the University o f Wisconsin and at San Jose State
College, California, (now California State University at San Jose) where he
functioned as an event photographer. Harvey Littleton also amassed a collection o f
historic glass that includes one section devoted to studio glass made by visiting
artists in his studio. While this type of collection has a personal cachet, the influence
of friendship tended to dilute the quality. John and Anne Gould Hauberg, founding
supporters o f the Pilchuck Glass Center, had developed their taste through exposure
to high art, spurred by Anne’s art education and a friendship with painter Mark
Tobey. They discovered glass in 1971.8 0
8 0 Anne Gould Hauberg had studied under the then-unknown painter Mark Tobey
and had wanted to open a Mark Tobey Museum o f Northwest Arts and Crafts. The
museum was also to be an art center and located on a hilltop with a view of Puget
Sound and the Olympic Mountains. But Tobey was not interested in a rural setting,
and the project was dropped. This left the way open for a fruitful connection between
Chihuly and the Haubergs in the early 1970s. For a complete account of this see Tina
Oldknow, Pilchuck: A Glass School (Seattle: Pilchuck Glass School and the
University of Washington Press, 1996), 48-51, and Lloyd E. Herman, Clearly
Pilchuck: Pilchuck's Glass Legacy, (Washington (State): Whatcom Museum of
History and Art, 1992), 17-8.
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192
Fig. 23. Goblet, 1971. This blown goblet is purported to be the first piece blown at
Pilchuck Glass School in 1971. Anne Gould Hauberg Collection, Seattle,
Washington.
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193
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194
Other collectors included glass within contemporary craft collections that
they sought to make encyclopedic. Paul and Elmerina Parkman, o f Washington, D.C.
received their initial introduction to crafts (and glass) through the Objects: USA
exhibition in 1969. In time they became supporters of the Renwick Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution, and involved with the craft field through a broad range o f
educational and acquisition activities. The Parkmans are unusual in their passion for
the medium and represent a typical arc in the glass community, moving from
accidental enthusiasts to knowledgeable and devoted supporters o f all institutions
and organizations that relate to the craft world. For them collecting came to lie
“beyond the acquisition of the object.” 8 1
But the newly opened studio glass galleries were by far the greatest influence
for those with access to them. Hilbert and Jean Sosin of Michigan first encountered
glass in 1971 at the Habatat Gallery, in Dearborn, Michigan Jean Sosin remembers “I
was overwhelmed by the beauty o f the glass around me. That evening filled with
excitement, I told my husband that I wanted to learn about and collect this new art
form. From that day on, I stopped collecting prints and devoted my energy to glass.”
Once again, the visual impact o f glass had transformed an art collector to a glass
collector. By 1977 Hilbert Sosin, after seeing a glassblowing demonstration by Herb
Babcock, then head of the Glass Department of the Center of Creative Studies,
became committed as well.
8 1 Paul and Elmerina Parkman, “Beyond Acquisition,” Glass Art Society Journal
(1989), 58 - 62.
8 2 Jean Sosin, “Glass Collectors in the USA,” Neues Glas 2 (1986): 204-7.
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195
The Sosin’s collection featured vessels and works of selected artists in
depth, as can be exemplified by their 12 work groups (1971-1984) by Richard Ritter.
As usual with couples who collect, each piece is selected jointly, with Mrs. Sosin
reporting a “gut reaction” to the work, and Mr. Sosin intrigued by technique. But the
Sosins took the unusual step of collecting ephemera relating to the artists and their
exhibitions and strove to became knowledgeable about the history of glass.
In 1981 they formed the Studio Glass Collectors Group to encourage the
Detroit Institute o f Art to collect glass for its permanent collection. Many o f the
early collectors founded such support groups and encouraged museums to acquire
and show glass, hoping to expand the profile of the medium. This assertive approach
whereby museums were brought to the medium by collectors, is unique to the craft
world and indicates the commitment felt by collectors, as well as their interest in
preserving their investment. The parallel efforts made by dealers to promote their
chosen medium will be covered in the next chapter.
8 3 Jean Sosin, “Glass Collectors in the USA,” Neues Glas 2 (1986): 204-7. During
this period collecting painting and sculpture had become a high-profile activity with
nationally prominent and wealthy collectors Nelson A. Rockefeller, Joseph H.
Hirshom, Norton Simon and Giovanni Agnelli. In contrast the glass collecting
community, was comprised of successful middle class professionals like Michigan
C.P.A. Hilbert Sosin. They were able to join the game by collecting art material that
sold for a fraction o f the Old Masters or avant-garde paintings.
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1963: Studio Glass Enters The Museum of Modern Art, New York
196
Even though the forms produced by the early glass artists were not
sophisticated in content or execution, some significant high art museums were eager
to display the new medium and even to add it to their permanent collections. Again,
this occurred with amazing rapidity that built on the groundbreaking work toward
acceptance already accomplished by clay and textiles.
In 1963, one year after the Toledo Workshops, the Art Institute of Chicago
displayed studio glass by Harvey Littleton. The next year he had a one-person
exhibition at the Museum o f Contemporary Crafts in New York, and that, in turn, led
to his work entering the permanent collection of the prestigious Museum of Modem
Art. These events had profound implications for the movement, and the story
surrounding the MOMA acquisition, particularly, highlights the ongoing effort to
place studio glass in a museum context.
In preparation for inclusion in an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary
Craft, scheduled to open in 1964, Littleton submitted a work for consideration.
Littleton recounts that the events started with his
irrational act of fusing and finishing a form that [he] smashed in an act of
displeasure.. . . the piece lay in the studio for some weeks before [he] ground
the bottom and brought it in the house. It aroused such immediate antipathy
in [his]wife that [he] looked at it much more closely, finally deciding to send
it to an exhibition. Its refusal there made [him] even more obstinate, and [he]
took it to New York to show with other more established forms included in
84
[his] exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in January 1964.
8 4 Harvey K. Littleton, Glassblowing: A Search for Form (New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold Company, 1971), 139.
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197
Unsuccessful in having it included with his other work, he “stepped across the
street” and showed it to the Design Department at MOMA. Littleton continues
“[although it was not displayed then [at the ACC], I later showed it to the curators
of design at the Museum o f Modem Art. They, perhaps relating it to some other neo-
Dada work in the museum, purchased it for the Design Collection.” 8 5 He credits the
addition of the piece to the collection to the fact that the Design Department was
O f
“desperately running around trying to buy things.” So, although having already
been rejected by the Museum o f Contemporary Crafts, Littleton’s nonfunctional vase
was purchased, not donated, by the Design Department for the Museum of Modem
J 17
Art’s permanent collection. Most interestingly, Littleton remembers that the
museum acquisition committee initially told the Design Department that they could
not buy it because it was glass but didn’t have a hole in it. This removed it from a
utilitarian classification and hence placed it technically outside o f the Design
Department’s purview and within that of the art department as a piece of sculpture.
This somewhat fuzzy logic reflected the museum’s guidelines, which privileged
8 5 Harvey K. Littleton, Glassblowing: A Search fo r Form (New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold Company, 1971), 139.
8 6 Harvey K. Littleton, American Craftspeople Project: The Reminiscences o f Harvey
Littleton, (Columbia University, Oral History Office, 1988), 31.
8 7 Harvey K. Littleton, Glassblowing: A Search fo r Form (New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold Company, 1971), 7. For a perceptive discussion o f contemporary art trends
that may have affected the acquisition see Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, “Conceptual Art
1962 - 1969” October 55 (Winter 1990): 37 -143. The significance of the gift versus
a purchase is important. A gift means that the curator felt that it was appropriate for
the item to enter the collection. A purchase means that precious acquisition funds
were paid for the work, indicating a deeper level of enthusiasm.
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198
painting and sculpture but permitted the acquisition of works from the “allied arts
o f architecture, film, photography, industrial design, manual industry, dance and
so
theaters design.” Craft-based works were only to be considered when related to
industry or technology, not as artworks. As curator Craig Miller notes
[d]uring this time, MOMA evolved a distinct policy in that they were only
interested in craft when it showed a new development in technology or
material which could perhaps be applied to industrial design. Craft was not
excluded per se from the museum, but its status was very much that of a
Q Q
‘second cousin.
This, of course reflected the general high art view of craft-based work. The fact that
Littleton’s piece was acquisitioned after first being rejected by the artist (and his
wife), as causing “displeasure,” and then being rejected by those who were familiar
with crafts (the ACC) seems to hint at curatorial naivete on the part of MOMA staff
and to exemplify the dangers of limited expertise.
1972: “Technique is Cheap”
The central controversy that animated the first decade o f studio glass was
whether technique or art ambition was more integral to the growth of the movement.
These two competing goals were loosely personified by Dominick Labino for the
8 8 James T. Soby, “The Collection of the Museum of Modem Art: Four Basic
Policies,” Art in America 32, No. 4 (October 1944): 235.
8 9 R. Craig Miller, “Betwixt and Between: Contemporary Glass in American Art
Museums,” The Glass Art Society Journal, (1991): 27-32.
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199
technical side and Harvey Littleton for the side that wished to use glass for
artmaking.
This growing tension was evidenced by the shift in formal vocabulary from
vessel-based works to sculptural ones. Initially studio glass made in the sixties
related formally to utility-linked, vessel-based contemporary ceramics. This is not
surprising, for just as Littleton was a potter, most of the other participants in the
Toledo workshops had backgrounds in clay, and many o f the new university glass
departments grew from existing ceramics programs. Also the practicalities of
glassblowing favored the technically easier vessel. Bubbles of glass created on the
end of a blowpipe are by nature vessels, having once held the air that formed them.9 0
To remove this utilitarian taint from blown glass took conscious action and an
ambition to communicate content beyond issues relating to “containment.” It was
this goal in fact that spurred the interest in nonblown works, for they could be more
easily fashioned into content-compatible, sculptural works.
During the first decade or so, the need to conquer technique before led some
to focus on it to the exclusion of content. While the perceived controversy was
couched in “either/or” terms, in reality it was a procedural conflict. To make glass
you had to have the technique. But studio glass emerged during a time when the high
art world had eschewed high skill in favor of casually crafted paintings and
9 0 The quality of the glass also effect the tension. Until the late 1960s most glass
blown in American studios was derived from the #475 fiberglass marbles used at the
Toledo Workshops, rather than being mixed from raw ingredients. The resulting
work displayed a characteristic pale green tint that limited the visual effects and,
hence, the content that could be attained. Lack of knowledge of about glass
chemistry restricted the color palate and consequently, the type o f glass art made.
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sculptures. As already has been noted, the valuing of objects became
controversial as content was separated from material and physical expression, as
avant-grade, nonobject based, conceptual art took center stage in urban galleries.
This made the “how to” of glass production seem antiquated next to the art-linked
“what.” This question of focus on technique threatened to bar studio glass from
acceptance by the object-wary, high art world.
Littleton had always favored using glass for art production, and he
understood the value of technique. It is ironic that he chose to work with blown
glass, which required more skill than any of the other methodologies, making him
initially dependent on colleagues like Labino. He also had the chance to make
sculptural clay, as that avenue had been opened by Peter Vouikos among others, but
he did not. Instead, Littleton soon grew impatient with technique and showed his
irritation when he uttered his categorical statement that “technique is cheap” at the
National Sculpture Conference in Lawrence, Kansas in 1972. Wishing to position
himself as part o f the sculpture community, Littleton tried to shift the discourse and
the activity of glassmaking from skill-based to content-centered. By calling for a
break from the craft of glass (and its expression through the utility-referent vessel)
and a move toward sculpture, which he equated to “art,” Littleton disdained those
who focused on technology.
This represented a turnabout. Historically, Littleton had positioned technique
as the main concern of glassmakers He stated that the “main barrier to studio glass
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has been the lack of a small furnace.”9 1 This acknowledged the fact that in the
beginning, studio glass could not progress outside o f the factory until it could
physically be made in a studio. This placed the two potentially competing notions on
a time line with technical issues to be addressed first and art second. It also, perhaps
unwittingly, favored Labino’s practical inventions ahead of the artistic ambitions of
Littleton and his followers. And although Labino also strove to make art from glass,
he continued for a number o f years to insist that the artists needed to understand the
physical nature of their material in order to accomplish their art making. Later,
Littleton disagreed saying that “[i]t wasn’t making the piece that was important, but
what you made.”9 2
Littleton’s provocative denigration defined the subsequent movement. Artists
were either with Littleton’s or Labino’s sensibility. Littleton was correct, however,
that for glass to be considered a contender in the high art world — his long time
ambition — it would have to be content driven, with skill a necessary handmaiden.
This would have made Labino also correct and an equal partner in the early
development of the glass movement. With elements of their individual pasts and
passions evident, Littleton’s attitude (because it expressed the mounting art
ambitions felt by glass artists who had trained in art schools) became and remained
the predominate philosophy. It also allowed glass to challenge the boundaries of the
high art world. Separated by their competing visions of studio glass, Labino would
9 1 Harvey K. Littleton, American Craftspeople Project: The Reminiscences o f Harvey
Littleton (Columbia University, Oral History Office, 1988), 31.
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202
skillfully fabricate vessels for the rest of his life, and Littleton would move to
sculptural forms and finally into printmaking using glass sheets.
Ironically, as the studio glass movement entered the late 1970s technique did
recede as a central concern but not because one personality won over another or
because other fabrication techniques regained favor. Rather, technique ceased to be a
focus because it had been conquered by the mid-1970s, due in large part to Labino’s
inventions. But by that time Littleton’s statement of 1972 had left a bitter taste and
was read as a direct criticism of all who worked to attain technical proficiency.
Some believed that it was driven, not by Littleton’s commitment to content in
glass, but rather by the material rewards that awaited those who gained high art
world acceptance for their “product.” Early studio glass artist and former professor
of art at Kent State University Henry Halem notes that
[a]rt is not a product, but for some reason many o f us treat it as if it were. To
me the person who best exemplifies the idea of glass as a product is Harvey
Littleton. He makes no bones over the fact that it is money that concerns him
most and, as a result, treats his glass as a product. He is not alone in having
confused priorities. 9 3
The tension between the technical versus art ambition continues and the question of
Littleton as the putative leader of the glass movement still fosters controversy. But as
9 2 Harvey K. Littleton, American Craftspeople Project: The Reminiscences o f Harvey
Littleton (Columbia University, Oral History Office, 1988), 62.
9 3 Henry Halem, “Beyond Technique,” Glass 39, (Winter 1989): 11. Littleton stated
in his oral history that the “tragedy of the [Bernard] Leach philosophy” is that the
humble and poor craftsman stance did not permit the artist to grow and “get ahead.”
Harvey K. Littleton, American Craftspeople Project: The Reminiscences o f Harvey
Littleton (Columbia University, Oral History Office, 1988), 22.
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203
glass artists became familiar with the material, their work naturally moved from
vessel to content vehicle. The resulting studio glass became predominately a
sculptural, content-driven medium that was poised to challenge the high art world
establishment.
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204
Part II: American Studio Glass Movement: Commodification and Patronage,
1975 to 1990
Chapter 4
Creating a Market for Studio Glass : Dealers, Galleries, and the Secondary
Markets, 1975 to 1990
In this initial chapter of Part 2, the focus turns from recounting the history of
American studio glass to analyzing its transformation into a collected art commodity.
The shift is characterized by increasingly sophisticated marketing practices and the
emergence of a collector class. Although these developments occurred in tandem,
they are examined in separate chapters in order to give a fuller review of each.
Chapter 1, Part 2 will review the marketing o f glass and related activities, and
Chapter 2, Part 2 will discuss patronage, both public and private, and the role that
museums played in the widening acceptance o f the medium.
In the course of examining the history o f the marketing o f glass, Chapter 1
will review the marketing opportunities that existed prior to 1975 (which were
touched upon in Chapter 3, Part 1). These consisted o f craft fairs and multimedia
craft shops. These venues set the stage for the emergence of “glass-only” galleries
and the appearance o f a secondary market during the period 1975 to 1990, which
will be covered in Chapter 2. In order to facilitate these developments, studio glass
marketers, makers and patrons adopted many high art marketing practices that, in
turn, guided the dealers’ activities and determined the form of the “glass-only”
gallery system.
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205
After the American studio glass movement reached beyond its factory and
hobbyist associations, it was poised to form a national marketing system.1 The
system grew out of the two distinct marketing formats that operated after the mid-
1960s: craft fairs (regional and then national) and multimedia craft shops. These, in
turn, culminated in a network of galleries dedicated solely to studio glass. As each
new format emerged, the medium and the marketing system gained sophistication,
even as the older venues retained their positions. The appearance of “glass-only”
galleries resulted in national attention, higher prices, and, eventually, acceptance for
a few glass artists within high art galleries. Thus studio glass moved from a hobby
material to an art commodity.
The role of the dealer, the display strategies employed in galleries, and the
market-linked literature about studio glass will be examined in order to clarify this
progression. A brief discussion of the leading “crossover” artist, Dale Chihuly, will
reveal the degree o f permeability that ultimately developed between studio glass and
high art worlds.
1 Lawrence Alloway, “Network: The Art World Described as a System,” Artforum
11, No. 1 (September 1972): 28-36. Also see Raymonde Moulin, trans. Arthur
Goldhammer, The French Art Market: A Sociological View (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1987), particularly his discussion of “the actors,” i.e., art
dealers, art critics, collectors, and painters (artists) who make up the art market. For
the purposes of this study these are the categories used to analyze the studio glass
movement. Also see Thomas E. Crow, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-
Century Paris (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), specifically for his
detailed discussion o f the audience expansion as it moved from a specialized group
to a more general public. This same pattern is seen in relationship to studio glass
during this period. Crow’s book also served as the source o f many ideas about
studio glass expressed by R. Craig Miller and quoted in the subsequent two chapters.
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206
Review of the Marketing of Studio Glass through Craft Fairs and
Multimedia Shops before 1975
The first arena for marketing glass involved the selling o f glass directly by
the newly defined “studio glass artists” to their friends and local supporters. The one-
to-one marketing augmented the already established regional and local “fairs” o f the
1950s and 1960s, where limited quantities o f proto-studio glass were available.
Although glass had only a modest presence at these fairs, the impact on the
subsequent movement was significant. Seasonal and regional fairs introduced
handmade goods fabricated by hobbyists and amateur makers to the general public
and established a regular pattern of annual (or semiannual) events. Fairs also
strengthened the community of craftsmen by providing an opportunity for them to
congregate and exchange information for a few days while they sold their wares
from makeshift stalls. Proto-studio glassmakers Michael Higgins and Edris Eckhardt
frequently participated in these activities (Fig. 24).
Crafts fairs had a further direct effect in relationship to studio glass. In
Michigan, Harvey Littleton, while still working in clay, participated in such events
and later transferred what he learned about this form of marketing to the selling of
his own early glass. Similar marketing was also in evidence at the casual sales held
at the newly opened Pilchuck Glass School, near Seattle, Washington, in the early
1970s. Items made during the current session were placed on tables and sold to
bystanders at the local multimedia Anacortes craft fair (Fig. 25). When
2 Tina Oldknow, Pilchuck: A Glass School (Seattle: Pilchuck Glass School and the
University of Washington Press, 1996), 69-70.
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207
Fig. 24. Michael Higgins at Craft Fair. These events strengthened the craft
community by providing an opportunity for crafts people to congregate and
exchange information for a few days while selling their wares from makeshift stalls.
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209
Fig. 25. Anacortes Craft Fair, July 1971. Here items made during the current
session at Pilchuck Glass School were placed on tables and sold to bystanders at the
local multimedia Anacortes craft fair.
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institutionalization of multimedia fairs came about in the mid-1960s through the
agency of the American Craft Council, the fairs became nationally organized but
regionally operated sales events, which paralleled the ongoing one-to-one market.3
Fairs established moved craft toward becoming a national art commodities in
two important ways. First, they provided a means for craftsmen to earn a living wage
from their work. By i960 craftsmen were expressing an interest in learning about the
business aspects of their endeavor. At the First World Congress of Craftsmen, held at
Columbia University, in 1964, Stanley Marcus of Neiman-Marcus, led a half-day
session with Dr. Rudolf Amheim, professor of psychology o f art at Sarah Lawrence
College, and Goran F. Holmquist, then-president of Bonniers, entitled “Production
and Marketing in One World;” it addressed the realities of merchandising and
marketing o f crafts.4 Clearly, the realization that craft items could be marketed like
any other commodity intrigued craftsmen and indicated the shift from casual
3 The development of a national market for art directly impacted the acceptance and
commodification of studio glass. Without the network of galleries made up of urban
and regional ones, glass would not have been able to gain standing as an art medium.
For a discussion of regional markets for the arts versus urban ones, see Stuart
Plattner, High Art Down Home: An Economic Ethnography o f a Local Art Market
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 27-47.
4 See the catalogue of The First World Congress o f Craftsmen, June 8 to 19, 1964,
Columbia University, New York. Crafts were often marketed through large
department stores during this period so the attention of Marcus and Holmquist was
natural. In time the interaction o f mass marketing (something that the crafts were
afraid of) and the effect of advancing urbanization and industrialization separated
craft from department store venues, and crafts created their own marketing system.
See Paul DiMaggio, “Market Structure, the Creative Process, and Popular Culture:
Toward an Organizational Reinterpretation o f Mass Culture Theory,” Journal o f
Popular Culture 11, No. 2 (Fall, 1977): 436-52.
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212
hobbyist to committed professional was underway.5 A second result of the
expanded craft fair activity was the increased exposure o f handmade objects; this led
to the formation o f a nationwide, middle-class audience for crafts. With this
groundwork laid, crafts (and glass) were ready to move on to its next marketing
venue: the multimedia craft shop.
As craft fairs established a steady demand for handmade items, the need for
year-round outlets became evident and this prompted the appearance of multimedia
craft shops.6 As noted in Chapter 3, one of the most important of these was America
House, the leading New York outlet for handcrafted works (Fig. 26). Although
located in an urban center, the crafts presented relied on preindustrial fabrication
methods and provided a romanticized image of the rural craftsman. Items for sale
were presented within a faux-domestic setting that stood proudly in contrast to the
chilly “modernist” presentations that could be seen around the comer at the Museum
5 For a discussion o f the active and calculated marketing of traditional crafts in this
same period, see Jane S. Becker, Selling Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction
o f an American Folk, 1930-1940 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina
Press, 1998), esp. 1-25 and 189-223.
6 Within this context shop refers to retail outlets that sell handcrafted items of all
media for domestic use to a middle-class public. In such shops the displays would
often mimic domestic interiors as a method of educating the public about how to use
unique items in their homes. The term gallery, on the other hand, implies a retail
outlet that sells items, either of one medium or many, selected for their purported
quality. Galleries have pretensions to art status and frequently borrow display
techniques from high art painting and sculpture galleries or museums. See Davira S.
Taragin, “Studio Craft Comes of Age,” Contemporary Crafts and the Saxe
Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press and the Toledo Museum o f Arts, 1993),
11-19.
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213
Fig. 26. Am erican House, January 1946. Items for sale were presented within a
faux-domestic setting that stood proudly in contrast to the chilly “modernist”
presentations that could be seen around the comer at the Museum of Modem Art.
Craft Horizons 5, No. 12 (February 1946): 33.
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215
of Modem Art. While the existence o f such venues for handmade objects would
eventually benefit studio glass, at the time little glass was available.7
America House was joined in New York by various galleries that periodically
sold craft-based works, such as Rabun Studios on East 67th Street. Painting and
sculpture galleries also occasionally mounted exhibitions of clay, for example Bertha
Schaefer, Allan Stone, and Zabriske. Outside o f New York, similar shops sprung up,
among them the Signature Shop in Atlanta; Betty Scheinbaum’s Galeria del Sol in
Santa Barbara, California; The Works in Philadelphia; and The Egg and Eye in Los
Angeles, which would later become the Craft and Folk Art Museum (Fig. 27). The
last two continue in operation today in modified form.
Typical o f these multimedia craft ventures was Shop One, founded in 1956
by jeweler Jack Prip, cabinetmaker Tage Frid, and potter Frans Wildenhain, in
Rochester, New York. Located in a residential part of town, Shop One presented
itself as a noncommercial outlet that combined features of an elegant domestic
interior and an art gallery, displaying goods in cases and on furniture. Prices were
modest ranging from seventy-five cents to seventy-five dollars. But as was often the
case, the owner/craftsmen discovered that Shop One did not support itself, and, they
had to look for outside income, usually in the form o f an “angel.” Founder Prip
quipped, “every time there is a craft venture you’d scratch beneath the surface and
7 An exception was the work o f Joel Philip Myers who was employed as a glass
designer for Blenko Glass Factory in Milton, West Virginia. In his spare time he
made a series o f one-off works that were featured in 1964 at America House during
the First World Congress o f Craftsmen held at Columbia University.
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216
Fig. 27. Opening and Sale at the Los Angeles Egg and Eye, ca. November 1965.
Soon this venue would be renamed the Craft and Folk Art Museum and later Los
Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum.
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218
find some wealthy person supporting it.” 8 Shop One represented all o f the
features of multimedia craft shops of this period: display in “domestic” interiors,
precarious financial footing, and low prices. For these and other reasons, Shop One
closed in 1977 just as glass was establishing a presence in the next marketing arena:
the gallery dedicated to studio glass.
The Rise of Studio Glass Dealers and Dedicated “Glass-Only” Galleries
[The artist is] a visionary seer, a person with special gifts whose talent and
training enable him or her to make the invisible manifest to the rest of us. The
artist is a messenger. The dealer assists by maintaining the gallery which
functions as a meeting place for those seeking the artist’s message. 9
Douglas Heller
Passionate respect for the glass artist and the realization of the need for a
marketing mechanism to operate between glass artists and the buying public
provided the impetus for the founding of “glass-only” galleries.1 0
8 Carl Fox, “Brooklyn Museum’s Craft Shop,” Craft Horizonsll, No. 6 (November -
December 1958): 17, and Jane S. Becker Selling Tradition: Appalachia and the
Construction o f an American Folk, 1930-1940 ( Chapel Hill: The University of
North Carolina Press, 1998). Becker notes that as progressives discovered the
perceived virtue of crafts, they sought to increase the market for them by applying
aggressive marketing tactics and them imposing often draconian production
practices on producers.
9 Douglas Heller, “About Galleries,” Glass Art Society Journal (1988): 32.
1 0 This passion for art was a limited commodity. During the 1940s the number of
galleries specializing in American art was only about twenty. In 1968 the first high
art galleries opened in SoHo, New York, and by 1978 seventy-seven were in
business. By that date there was one studio glass gallery in New York: Heller
Gallery, which opened in 1972. On September 25, 1971, four significant high art
galleries opened at the 420 West Broadway building: Andre Emmerich, John Weber,
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219
As a new phenomenon both within the craft world and art marketing
universe, opening a studio glass gallery was a financially challenging activity. Studio
glass galleries are typically small businesses that have owner-directors and a few
low-wage assistants to help with packing and installation. Described as high risk and
subject to the usual rigors o f business enterprise, curator-tumed-dealer Charles
Cowles notes that
a gallery is a business and the business should make money. The Art Dealers’
Association does not consider a person for membership until he has been in
business for five years, because ninety-five percent o f all galleries - and this
is a statistic quoted by the Art Dealer’s Association — go out of business in
under five years.1 1
Complicating the chances o f success is the fact that traditional economic rules of the
marketplace do not apply to art markets; and the market for studio glass is even more
idiosyncratic because of its unique blend of attributes — an untried medium with
hobbyist-roots lacking a history of validation. Ironically, in this respect studio glass
easily joins high art as “just a little comer of the speculative market - albeit a highly
specialized one.” 1 2
Leo Castelli, and Ileana Sonnabend. Both Emmerich and Castilli would be important
to the studio glass world in later years. Interestingly, high art galleries such as
Emmerich, Blum-Helman, and Max Protetch showed clay in the early 1980s but did
not feature glass. See Diana Crane, The Transformation o f the Avant-Garde: The
New York Art World, 1940-1985 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987);
2; and Sharon Zukin, “Art in the Arms of Power: Market Relations and Collective
Patronage in the Capitalist State,” Theory and Society 11 (1982): 423-451 (p. 432).
1 1 Laura de Coppet and Alan Jones, eds. The Art Dealers: The Powers Behind the
Scene Tell How the Art World Really Works, (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc.,
1984), 246.
1 2 Martha Rosier, “Money, Power, Contemporary Art,” Art Bulletin 79, No. 1 (March
1997): 20-23.
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220
In order to make a success of marketing studio glass, dealers used
practices that date back to the early eighteenth century.1 3 A t that time a class o f
dealers was emerging that operated in a manner paralleling the commission system
used by the church, state, and aristocracy in securing art works. As dealers became
the middleman in the transactions that moved art from the artist’s studio into the
hands of private or state collectors, their role became central, and it soon developed
its own structure, customs, and mechanisms. After 1970 dealers in studio glass freely
adopted many o f these practices for the marketing of glass.
The selling of art requires a compelling vision of the commodity presented,
which must be supported by a mythology constructed to enhance that commodity.
Sociologist Diana Crane writes “the business of selling art is a most unusual one.
The nature of the commodity itself -it has been described as ‘dealing in myths’ - is
responsible for this. ”1 4 In the case of studio glass its visual appeal, compelling
forming methodology, and “brief’ contemporary history make it a perfect medium
for the creation of such a “mythology.” Indeed, the dealers needed only to accept the
carefully crafted narrative used by Littleton and his band of followers to relate the
“invention” of studio glass at the 1962 Toledo Workshops. By playing on the
1 3 Andrew McClellan “Watteau’s Dealer: Gersaint and the Marketing of Art in
Eighteenth-Century Paris,” Art Bulletin 78, No. 3 (September 1996): 439-453. He
notes that scorn for art dealers is already established by the eighteen century. Even
the term “dealer’s shop” (referred to in studio glass as a “a dealer’s collection,”)
denoted a group o f works assembled with dealer’s eye being substituted for the
collector’s, (p. 443).
1 4 Diana Crane, The Transformation o f the Avant-Garde: The New York Art World,
1940-1985 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 111.
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221
purported sui generis arrival of studio glass on the art scene, dealers could beguile
prospective buyers with this riveting “tale.”
Although mediated and incomplete, this “history” appealed to collectors
because, as cultural historian James Clifford has stated “[c]ollecting presupposes a
story; [and] a story occurs in a ‘chronotope.’” The little-known history of
contemporary glass provided a perfectly formed “time-space” narrative that focused
on its heady days in Toledo as a band of adventurous artists wrestled “art” from
amorphous molten glass. This in turn led to its inclusion in art school curricula and
placed it in on a par with high art.1 5 As a tale of American “can-do” spirit, grafted
onto the valorous goal o f “art creation,” the story provided a powerful narrative
center that succeeded in rousing a passion for collecting glass. The impact of that
unique passion among glass collectors will be analyzed in Chapter 5.
In order to sustain the mythology, the presentation strategies for studio glass
needed to be equally compelling. Consequently, dealers took pains to sculpt their
gallery spaces to look “less like a shop and more like a theater,” where the
mechanics of display aided their successful “selling o f myths.” To accomplish this
“glass-only” galleries borrowed the appearance o f avant-garde high art galleries with
their generally windowless spaces and spare modernist architecture intended to focus
1 5 James Clifford, “On Collecting Art and Culture,” The Predicament o f Culture:
Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1988), 236. Clifford takes his term from Mikhail Bakhtin who wrote in 1937
about the impact o f time and space on the structure o f novels. In Bakhtin’s
conception time and space have parity and fictional locales provide the structure for
their power relationship to be come visible. For glass one can argue that the need to
break free of the factory hegemony intensified the power issues surrounding the
events at Toledo in 1962 and caused this fact-based reality to be fictionalized and
mythologized for the benefit of the movement.
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attention on the works displayed. Spotlights beamed down on individual
artworks, carefully placed on raised pedestals with protective vitrines. These
strategies highlighted the “presence” of each piece, separating it from its audience
and the larger world-muting the external world that did not privilege glass. This
attempt at a closed system added to the elite implications of inclusion in this world
and reinforced the sense o f scarcity that is necessary for the selling of art. With this
in place, myth combined with “[t]he ‘commodity’ to [seemingly] succeed on its own
merits - to sell itself. ” 1 6
But dealers also had to be proactive in their marketing activities. To that end,
they focused on a three-part strategy for selling. First they increased visibility and
status for the medium. Second, they sought to differentiate themselves from other
glass dealers in the minds o f artists and collectors. And third, they gathered together
a stable of top-quality artists. All of these strategies were modeled on high art
practice.
To increase visibility (and to secure status) for studio glass, the dealers
introduced a regularly changing exhibition schedule, usually featuring the current
work of a single artist. These shows provided a set pattern of attendance, for as Ruth
Summers of Kurland/Summers, Los Angeles, noted “people did not just drop by,
they needed to have an occasion to come in for.”1 7 This led to adopting a sales tool
used in the high art galleries: the illustrated gallery announcement. Printed in runs of
1 6 Diana Crane, The Transformation o f the Avant-Garde: The New York Art World,
1940-1985 (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1987), 111.
1 7 Conversation with Ruth Summers, February 6, 2000.
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223
less than a thousand, these became the first regularized documentation o f studio
glass. They usually included the artist’s name, a picture of a work offered for sale,
the dates of the show, the time and date of the opening party, and most interestingly,
technical data. These “publications” positioned dealers as the primary suppliers of
information about the artists and the medium; they also focused attention on the “gee
whiz” appeal of glass. In an important way dealers provided the commodity and then
defined the point o f initial understanding for the medium as technique.1 8
To augment gallery announcements, dealers soon began to publish slim
brochures, sometimes generously called catalogues.1 9 While not scholarly or
theoretical in their approach or depth of information, these publications were the first
to document in an extended form the works being produced.2 0 Overtime gallery
1 8 Controlling the information, dealers successfully focused interest on easily
comprehensible matters, e.g. how a work was formed, and not on theoretical issues.
Control of this kind can be likened to what Irving Sandler describes as the insider
process of the painting world in New York during the mid 1940s. See Irving
Sandler, “The Club,” Artforum 4, No. 1 (September, 1965), 27-31.
1 9 The production o f in-house publications by dealers began in the late nineteenth
century in Paris when Paul Durand-Ruel produced a review of the Barbizon and
Impressionist painters shown in his gallery. See A. Deirdre Robson, Prestige. Profit,
and Pleasure: The Market fo r M odem Art in New York in the 1940s and 1950s (New
York: Garland Publishers, 1995), 90.
2 0 As part of a larger discussion o f the formation of the art market and the
commodification o f art, Andrew McClellan credits the French dealers with
instituting two marketing tools that survive today in the high art world and were
adopted by the glass world: the public auction o f artworks and the publication of
sales catalogue for auctions, (p. 445). He also credits Watteau’s dealer, Edme-
Frangios Gersaint (1694-1750) with inventing the sales catalogue, which began as a
newspaper or flyer, as a means o f publicity. Unlike the contemporary sales
catalogue, Gersaint's were filled with personal asides relating to the works presented.
The auction and sales catalogues for auctions have been instrumental in the
commodification o f American studio glass. Andrew McClellan, “Watteau's Dealer:
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224
publications came to include commissioned essays about the artists. Functioning
essentially as sales tools, the catalogues lacked objective assessments, reflecting the
0 1
newness o f glass as an art medium.
O f almost equal importance were the form and function of the exhibition
opening. A festive, party-like event, the opening was a social occasion with a veiled
business intent. Gallery sheets communicated the asking price for the works o f art,
and wine and nibbles spurred conviviality. As an added fillip the artist was usually
present, providing a chance for all to meet and claim to “know” him.2 2 Especially
committed supporters would be invited to see the show before the opening in order
to have first chance at the best pieces. Works sold in this manner were then indicated
on opening night as either a “sale” with a red dot next to their pedestal numbers or as
a “hold” with a green (or half dot). These were calculated to increase the buzz as
attendees speculated about who had purchased what.2 3
Gersaint and the Marketing of Art in Eighteenth-century Paris,” Art Bulletin 78, No.
3 (September 1996): 443 and passim.
2 1 American painting and sculpture went through a similar stage in the development
of its supporting literature. See Wanda Com, “Coming of Age: Historical
Scholarship in American Art.” The Art Bulletin 70, No. 2 (June 1988): 188-207 and
Elizabeth Johns, “Histories of American Art: The Changing Quest” Art Journal 44,
No. 4 (Winter 1984) 338-345.
2 2 For a discussion of the interaction of the market and cultural artifact, especially the
dynamics o f the group and the artifact’s usage as a conversational tool, see Gary
Alan Fine, “Popular Culture and Social Interaction: Production, Consumption, and
Usage,” Journal o f Popular Culture 11, No. 2 (fall 1977): 381-384.
2 3 Martha Drexler Lynn, “Panel: Gallery Dealers in Glass,” The Glass Art Society
Journal (1993), 51-54.
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225
To further expand their market, glass dealers needed to differentiate their
wares from those o f others who were also selling studio glass.24 During the period
1975 to 1990 a two-prong approach was required. The first was to separate the
presentation format from that seen in the earlier craft fairs and multimedia craft
shops; this was achieved by no longer displaying works in makeshift stalls or
pseudo-domestic settings. Substituted was the “high art gallery” furniture of
pedestals and vitrines already mentioned. The second prong involved presenting
predominantly content-driven works; this became increasingly possible as artists
expanded their work into issues of content rather than technique.
One impediment to creating a distinctive sensibility for each dealer was the
limited supply o f talent. Consequently, the quality of the relationship between the
artists and the dealer often determined which gallery secured the best works from
that artist. This was often related to the perceived ability of the dealer to expose the
artist’s works to prestigious collectors and this tended to give urban dealers an edge
over their regional confreres. In Los Angeles, Ruth Summers worked around this
2 4 Crane notes that in the high art world of painting and sculpture, dealers
differentiate themselves through the championing a new style or medium, i.e.,
moving from acrylics to photography. Because studio glass is a medium-linked
expression, such shifts were not possible. But when artists moved from hot blown
glass to warm and/or cold glass techniques, or from vessel-based works to content-
drive pieces, this could provide the differentiation necessary. Diana Crane, The
Transformation o f the Avant-Garde: The New York Art World, 1940-1985 (Chicago:
The University of Chicago, 1987), 110-118.
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226
issue by sponsoring a greater number o f new artists, and this strategy succeeded
because glass collectors were always looking for the next, new discovery.2 5
All dealers worked to assemble a stable of top artists to represent. This
involved spending time in selecting and grooming new artists before introducing
them to the public. The ability to find and champion new talent involved continual
contact with recent graduates from the glass schools, as well as matching the artists
to the individual collector’s tastes. In practical terms, new talent was found through
tips from other artists and teachers or from artist-initiated, “cold-call” introductions
through slides. To bring forward a new artist, especially in a medium not yet vetted,
meant a commitment of time and resources, as well as a perceptive eye. The function
of introducing new talent to a collecting community made the dealer an
indispensable player in the art-world system.2 6 For the studio glass artist (as for high
art artists) by “the 1980s, the development of artists’ careers and reputation was
increasingly tied to dealers’ complex promotion and marketing schemes, and it was
difficult for artists to establish themselves outside of the dealer-gallery system.”2 7
2 5 Los Angeles dealer Ruth Summers recounts that with Heller and Habatat Gallery
representing most o f the major East Coast talent, she had to work to develop her own
group. Sadly, she found that after launching these artists, they would be lured away
by other galleries. Conversation on February 7,2000.
2 6 For the importance of the dealer in this equation see Anne M. Wagner, “Courbet’s
Landscapes and Their Market,” Art History 4 No. 4 (December 1981): 410-431. Here
the improvement in the market share for Courbet’s work after his death was credited
to the work o f dealers. This type of dealer-based power was also operative in the
studio glass world. Also see A. Deirdre Robson, Prestige, Profit, and Pleasure: The
Market fo r M odem Art in New York in the 1940s and 1950s (New York: Garland
Publishers, 1995), 77-85.
2 7 Krystyna Warchol, “Artists Entering the Marketplace: Pricing New Art,” in On the
Margins o f the Art Worlds, ed. Larry Gross (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995): 72.
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227
As part o f establishing a stable of artists and developing new talent, the
dealers often sought to have sole representation for the top producers. But exclusivity
has both advantages and disadvantages. One it brings to the fore is related to
geography. For example, to have exclusive representation with an East Coast dealer
might mean no exposure on the West Coast. For the artist this could mean losing out
on additional sales. Also, in a world as small as that o f studio glass, showing only a
select few artists might hinder future audience development, for not all would-be
collectors can afford their work. While this was not a problem during the early years
when a desirable piece could be purchased for a few hundred dollars, as works began
to cost several thousands of dollars, some collectors were priced out o f the market.
This reality was noted by “[o]ne-of-a-kind artists like [glass artist] Dale Chihuly...
[who] discovered that younger collectors need to be cultivated. The way that Chihuly
approached this market was by offering work that sold for less than $3,000.”2 8
Interestingly, Chihuly continues to produce a range of less expensive works and does
not sign exclusivity contracts with his dealers.
The Emergence of “Glass-Only” Galleries: Three Examples
During the 1970s and 1980s a number o f galleries dedicated solely to studio
glass emerged. While chronicling each one o f them is not the focus o f this study, a
These functions and their accompanying power are also seen European art galleries.
For a comparable case see Karl Max Kober’s “Art Exhibition and Art Galleries:
Their Role in Art Appreciation and the Perception of Art,” Journal o f Popular
Culture 18, No. 3 (Winter 1984): 125-144.
2 8 Wendy Rosen, “ The Changing Marketplace for Glass,” The Glass Art Society
Journal (1999): 86.
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228
review o f the development o f the three major galleries will illuminate how the
marketing o f glass came of age. The three examples to be discussed are: Habatat
Gallery, now part of a four-location organization that was first opened in Dearborn,
Michigan; Heller Gallery, the premier New York City glass gallery; and the now
defunct Kurland/Summers, Los Angeles.2 9 Each of these was influential as it
expanded the audience for glass, distinguished itself from other galleries who sold
glass, and fostered new talent. All three supplied vital conduits between artists and
collectors, both public and private.
Ferdinand Hampson with his sister Linda and her husband, Thomas J. Boone
founded Habatat Gallery in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1971 as a multimedia crafts
gallery. The selection of Michigan was a natural outgrowth o f the already established
Michigan Glass Month activities, which centered around Littleton and his followers.
As a means of drawing attention to glass Habatat instituted the First National Glass
Invitational two years after opening. The notion came to the gallery owners while
29
A partial listing of the galleries that showed glass in the 1970s are: Appalachian
Spring and Third Spring Galleries, Washington D.C.; Helen Drutt Gallery,
Philadelphia; The Elements Gallery, Greenwich, Connecticut; Fairtree Gallery, New
York (sister gallery to Galeria Del Sol in Santa Barbara); Foster/White Gallery,
Seattle; The Hand and the Spirit, Scottsdale, Arizona; Holstein Gallery, Stockbridge,
Massachusetts; Mindscape Gallery, Evanston, Illinois; Theo Portnoy Gallery, New
York; The Works, Philadelphia; and Yaw Gallery Birmingham, Michigan. A partial
listing o f the galleries that opened in the early 1980s is as follows: American Glass
Gallery, Santa Monica; Contemporary Artisan (renamed Elaine Potter Gallery), San
Francisco; Del Mano Gallery, Brentwood and Pasadena, California; Glass Veranda,
Boston, Greenwood Gallery, Washington D.C.; Houston, Maurine Littleton Gallery,
Washington D.C.; Meyer, Breier Weiss, San Francisco; Oktabec Gallery, Los
Angeles; Judy Youens Perception Gallery, Houston; Betsy Rosenfield Gallery,
Chicago; Synderman Gallery, Philadelphia; William Traver Gallery, Seattle. Many
of the galleries were multimedia and survived for only a few years. In 1991 Leo
Kaplan/Modem, New York, began to represent studio glass.
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229
returning from California after seeing a glass exhibition at the Richmond Art
Center in the San Francisco Bay Area that included blown works by Robert Fritz,
Marvin Lipofsky, and Dick Marquis, among others. The first invitational featured
work by 12 artists from both California and the Toledo area. All works were for sale
with the most expensive item being a vessel by Charles Lotton priced at $400.3 0
In 1976 and 1977 the works displayed were predominantly blown material
(conforming to Littleton’s definition of “true” studio glass) or stained glass (cold-
worked glass that had long been popular with the studio craftsman). By the end of
the 1970s, however, two groups working in glass had emerged: one that could be
best described as comprised of craftsmen who enjoyed the medium and another
comprised of those who produced concept-driven work. The two camps mirrored the
contemporaneous split between Dominick Labino, who wanted to conquer technique
first, and Littleton who felt that content should take precedence.
As content-driven material began to dominate (technical issues having been
solved), works that reflected this shift became the subject of the 10 Concepts in
Glass exhibition that Habatat mounted in 1979. Featuring work by Howard Ben Tre,
Steven Weinberg, William Carlson, Dan Dailey, and Mary Shaffer, among others,
the exhibition marked the transition from vessel-based forms to sculptural ones. At
the same time, Habatat became a dedicated studio glass gallery, showing both artist-
3 0 The other artists included were Herb Babcock, Bon Biniarz, Dick Huss, Kent
Ipsen, Don Johnson, Gilbert Johnson, James Lundberg, Thomas MaGlauchlin, Mark
Peiser, Richard Ritter and William Warehall. Dominick Labino was invited but
declined the invitation, but Habatat displayed his work anyway. As a consequence
Labino did not speak to Boone and Hampson for five years.
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230
made studio glass and high-end production glass. After relocating to a new, larger
space in Lathrup Village, Michigan, Habatat was able to separate production works
from unique, more sculptural material. This further underscored the “art” of the
unique material and differentiated Habatat’s offerings from those seen in the other
glass galleries.
The Habatat Galleries were leaders in publishing information about studio
glass.3 1 In 1981 Habatat copublished a catalogue with Bowling Green University
entitled Emergence in Glass that featured 57 new artists and 43 better-known ones.
In order to document the growth o f glass from 1974 to 1984, Habatat published
Glass State o f the A rt in 1984. Next followed a hardcover publication aimed at
providing guidance for collectors entitled Insight: A Collector’ s Guide to
Contemporary American Glass. This savvy volume presented glimpses into the
creative process presented through the words of each featured artist and was
positioned as an unabashed “collection building” tool. Next came 25 Years: Glass as
an Art Medium (1987) and Glass: State o f the Art I I (1989), both of which reinforced
the notion of glass as an art medium. In the early 1990s Habatat highlighted the
rapid ascension o f the medium with The Annual Invitational Exhibition 1973-1992:
3 1 For complete information about the first two decades of Habatat growth see Linda
Boone and Ferdinand Hampson, The Annual Invitational Exhibition, 1973- 1992: A
Tradition in the Evolution o f Glass (Michigan: Habatat Galleries, 1992); Ferdinand
Hampson, Insight: A Collector's; Guide to Contemporary American Glass (
Huntington Woods, Michigan: Elliot Johnston Publishers, 1985), Ferdinand
Hampson, et al., The 22nd Annual International Glass Invitational (Farmington Hills,
Michigan: Habatat Galleries, 1994), Ferdinand Hampson, ed. Glass: State o f the Art
II, (Huntington Woods, Michigan: Elliot Johnston Publishers, 1989); Ferdinand,
Hampson, Emergence in Glass, 1981: A National Invitational Exhibition (Bowling
Green: Bowling Green State Unversity, 1981).
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A Tradition in the Evolution o f Glass which featured works by the pioneers in
glass from the 1960s to the early 1980s. Both in terms o f number and quality,
Habatat led in the dissemination of written information about studio glass for the
general public and would-be collectors.
In 1972 the first New York gallery dedicated to studio glass was founded.
Originally named The Contemporary Art Glass Group, it was a joint project of
brothers Douglas and Michael Heller and Joshua Rosenblatt, and it developed into
the first single-medium glass gallery in the high-art capital o f the United States. As
with many new galleries, it operated on a shoestring, relocated several times, and
changed its name. Aiter the first two years the owners rented a very small gallery
space on impressive-sounding Madison Avenue. When they wanted to put on larger
exhibitions, however, they had to lease Lever House, where they presented two early
exhibitions, Contemporary Art Glass '76 and Glass America 1978.2 2 In 1978 they
moved their gallery, renamed Heller Gallery in 1982, to Soho the up-and-coming
■ I 'l
center for avant garde galleries at the time.
3 2 Marvin Lipofsky’s Venini Series-Spilt Piece (1975) and Mark Pieser’s The Wheat
Piece (from the “Paperweight Vase” Series (1978) were shown in the exhibition of
1978 and eventually were purchased by Marilyn and Eugene Glick and donated to
the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1995.
3 3 It is interesting to note that even in the high art world during the 1940s the number
of galleries specializing in American art was only about twenty. In 1968 the first
high art galleries opened in SoHo, New York, and by 1978 seventy-seven were in
business. Heller Gallery by that time was exclusively showing studio glass. See
Diana Crane, The Transformation o f the Avant-Garde: The New York Art World,
1940-1985 (Chicago: The University o f Chicago Press, 1987): 2; and Sharon Zukin,
“Art in the Arms o f Power: Market Relations and Collective Patronage in the
Capitalist State,” Theory and Society 11 (1982): 423-451.
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232
Using the strategies described above, Heller took the lead in representing
the top, most content-driven glass artists. Remembering the early days, Doug Heller
commented in 1988 that he “ had no thoughts o f pandering to the market - to the best
of [his] knowledge, there was no market.”3 4 The Heller brothers also introduced
European masters such as Czech artists Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova
and Swedish artist Bertil Vallien to interested New Yorkers. Convinced of the
potential of glass for art-making and the role o f the gallery as a meeting place for the
artist and collector, Heller combined an eye for sculptural work with increasingly
high prices. Conscious of the implications of anointing studio glass as a
“movement,” and hence conferring parity with other art-forms, Doug Heller prefers
to describe it as a “phenomenon” and sees it as having important links to the
European traditions of studio glass in Germany and Czechoslovakia.3 5 Heller
occupies a unique position as the only New York “glass-only” gallery, and it is
interesting to note that the only other gallery to show fine studio glass during this
period was a gallery that had established a reputation first in the world of painting
and sculpture: Charles Cowles. The significance of this will be explored below.
Meanwhile in Los Angeles the marketing of high-quality studio glass
occurred a bit later and originally fell to transplanted New Yorker John Kurland.3 6 A
3 4 Douglas Heller “About Galleries,” Glass Art Society Journal (1988): 32.
3 5 Conversation with Douglas Heller, New York City, January 19, 2000.
3 6 Southern California had four other locations that sold glass: Del Mano Gallery in
Brentwood and Pasadena; Eileen Kreman’s Design Recycled, Fullerton; and
Oktebec, located on Melrose Avenue, which specialized in Czech glass and dubious
Galle pieces.
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233
successful writer who relocated to Santa Cruz and began to personally collect
glass, Kurland opened his Ivor Kurland Glass Gallery in 1981. With little experience
in the business of running a gallery, he hired Ruth Summers in February 1982.
Summers who had previously worked at the high craft the Greenwood Gallery in
Washington D.C., provided the business expertise and the knowledge of the field that
Kurland lacked.
A few weeks later, however, Kurland died, and Summers, feeling a
responsibility to the artists who had placed work with him, wanted to keep the
gallery running. Through a chance meeting in late April 1982 with local collectors
Gloria and Sonny Kamm, Summers secured financial backing for the gallery (see
Chapter 5). In May 1982 it was renamed Kurland/Summers and the Kamms had
become Summers’ business partners.
As with Habatat and Heller before, Summers was ambitious for the medium,
and she quickly moved to improve the level of work she presented. Consciously
striving to create an “art” gallery, she began a regimen o f new exhibitions every six
weeks with printed invitations, gallery catalogues, and, price lists with red dots.
Display techniques included the installation of state-of-the-art low voltage lighting
and works placed on pristine white pedestals covered with vitrines. Realizing that the
artists and collectors would benefit from museum validation, she wooed curators at
the local Los Angeles County Museum of Art by offering to educate them about the
lore of studio glass. Recognizing that a dealer’s milieu wr as social, entertaining
artists, collectors and curators became a regular component of the gallery’s activities.
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Summers also developed new talent and was known for her willingness to commit
to artists for the long term.
While the gallery was successful, by the early 1990s Summers sensed a new
pattern among the collectors who seemed now to value art less than they did the
bragging rights about a coerced price reduction.37 After 12 years Kurland/Summers
closed on April 15, 1993. Ruth Summers reformulated her business and became a
private dealer of both new and secondary market studio glass.
A Measure of Success: The Escalating Price of Studio Glass
In the early days, studio glass artists feared that their work would be
described as mere “craft merchandise.” The threat was real because most of the work
made during the 1970s was small-scale, and vessel-based; it presented limited
content and was highly reliant on visual appeal. While such objects do not warrant
high art prices, as the artist’s ambitions grew and as they produced more abstract,
sculptural work, they wanted to be paid on parity with sculptors in other media. This,
however, would only happen when a select few studio glass artists who “crossed
over ” into the high art world. The quantifiable effect o f association with a high art
gallery is revealed in Patterson Sims’s comment that the difference between an artist
being represented in a less prestigious gallery and one being represented by a New
38
York high art gallery was about “ten-thousand dollars.”
3 7 Conversation with Ruth Summers, February 6, 2000.
3 8 Patterson Sims, “Material Culture/Cultural Material: Parallels in American Arts
and Crafts - 1945 to the Present,” paper delivered at the American Craft Museum
sponsored symposium A Neglected History, 2(fh Century American Craft, 1990, p.
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235
While both the artists and dealers desired this increase, escalating prices
were a concern to glass collectors. Almost as soon as glass began its transformation
into an art commodity, collectors began to reminisce fondly about how they had
started their collections with modest investments; now, however, they were
confronted with works that cost several thousands of dollars. In 1981 the Glass Art
Society Journal published an essay by Habatat owner Ferdinand Hampson noting
that the previous two years had seen a dramatic price increase for most studio glass
and that prices for the top artists had increased one-hundred percent.3 9 Hampson
believed that the rapid climb was the result of increasing numbers of collectors that,
in turn, reflected the expanded public exposure to glass due to museum exhibitions.
While this validated the investment side of collecting, it also threatened to drive
some supporters out of the market.
The usual time for a dealer and an artist to increase prices is the presentation
of a new gallery exhibition.4 0 The amount o f the increase is determined by delicately
judging what the response has been from collectors, curators, and the press and
assessing artist’s future potential. The reputation and location-urban or rural— o f the
gallery also affects the price. All of this is balanced by the need for the price to be
35. The comment was made in reference to a photographer who had moved from the
Light Gallery to Sidney Janis Gallery, New York City.
3 9 Ferdinand Hampson, "New Interest in Glass Sends Prices Soaring," Glass Art Society
Journal (1981): 38-40.
4 0 Krystyna Warchol, “Artists Entering the Marketplace: Pricing New Art,” in On the
Margins o f the Art Worlds, ed. Larry Gross (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995): 72.
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236
within the reach of the public. In glass the sheer cost of manufacturing makes the
basic cost higher than in other media, including painting.
The practice of providing discounts to purchasers also influences the retail
price. As the marketing of studio glass became more akin to the marketing o f high
art, glass dealers were routinely asked for discounts. This practice became
widespread and by the mid-1985 dealer Charles Cowles noted that
a lot of young collectors have come to expect a discount and don’t want to
buy unless they receive one. If a collector asks me for a discount he is asking
me to take money out of my pocket, or even worse, out of the artist’s pocket.
Its dishonest, ultimately, to the artist.4 1
Collectors, especially those who made many purchases, routinely used these
“courtesy discounts” to play one dealer against another. Because glass artists worked
in similar styles for long periods o f time, a number of related works could be
considered equivalent. But this practice brought with it a danger for if the cycle
continued, the profit margin become too small, driving dealers out of business and
closing off collector access to new work.
In 1972 the average price for studio glass was $150. By 1990 an emerging
artist’s work would bring over $500, while works by established artists would bring
many thousands. As expected, the prices, while lower than seen for paintings, placed
the “[cjustomer for craft [outside] o f the mainstream population. Less than 4% of the
entire population are potential customers for works priced $500 and up.”4 2 By the
4 1 Charles Cowles quoted in Laura de Coppet and Alan Jones, eds., The Art Dealers:
The Powers Behind the Scene Tell How the Art World Really Works, (New York:
Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1984), 248-49.
4 2 Wendy Rosen, “The Changing Marketplace for Glass,” The Glass Art Society
Journal (1999): 85. In support of the fluctuating valuation o f contemporary art,
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237
end of the period under examination large scale works by the best-known artists
brought as m uch as $85,000. Price escalation threatened to take the “poverty code
out of craft,” which would cause further separation of studio glass from the crafts
world.4 3 On the financial level, at least, studio glass had joined high art.
Publications, Exhibitions, and Critical Reviews
When dealer Fred Hampson stated that prices had increased 100% due to the
increased exposure afforded glass, he was highlighting an important factor in the
acceptance o f glass as an art form: museum exhibitions. Influencing dealers and the
collecting community (to be explored in Chapter 5), museum interest benefited the
commodification o f glass in three ways: first, it increased exposure for the medium
through exhibition catalogues; second, it elicited responses from the high art press;
and third, it documented museum interest, which implied increased validation for the
medium (to be reviewed in Chapter 5).
Diana Crane notes that “value is attributed entirely on the basis o f evaluations of
quality by experts, including critics, museum curators, and, to some extent, eminent
collectors. However, the criteria which they use to evaluate quality change as styles
change, and these evaluations are often inconsistent. The correlation between early
evaluations o f artworks and their eventual value can be very low. The early reviews
of Abstract Expressionism were very poor although the Museum of Modem Art
purchased some of these works as soon as they were shown. Within five years, the
values of some of these paintings had more than tripled.” Diana Crane, The
Transformation o f the Avant-Garde: The New York Art World, 1940-1985 (Chicago:
The University o f Chicago Press, 1987), 112.
4 3 American Craft editor Lois Moran as quoted in Davira S. Taragin, “Studio Craft
Comes o f Age,” Contemporary Crafts and the Saxe Collection (New York: Hudson
Hills Press and the Toledo Museum of Arts, 1993), 17.
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238
O f seminal importance to the commodification o f glass was the exhibition
New Glass: A Worldwide Survey mounted by The Coming Museum of Glass in
1979. Organized in conjunction with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and
supported by funds from the Pilkington Group, National Endowment for the Arts,
Owens-Illinois, and Owens-Coming, the exhibition was a juried presentation of 275
objects made by 196 glassmakers, designers, and companies drawn from
twenty-eight countries. Serving as jurors were Franca Santi Gualteri, editor of
Abitari, representing a housewares design sensibility; Russell Lynes with a cultural
history perspective; Wemer Schmalenbach, director o f the Kunst Museum in
Dusseldorf; and Paul Smith, then-director of the Museum of Contemporary Craft,
New York City, providing an art and craft sensibility respectively. Unlike its
predecessor, Glass 1959, the exhibition featured more studio glass than production
pieces. Juror Russell Lynes noted that “in the [G/ass] 1959 exhibition about ninety
per cent of the glass was ‘factory work’ and ten per cent glass was conceived and
made by craftsmen working as individual artists. This time the percentages are
almost reversed and so are the intentions of the makers.”4 4
The exhibition opened in Coming, New York, and toured to the Toledo
Museum of Art; the Renwick Gallery o f the National Collection of Fine Arts,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; and the Fine Arts Museums of San
Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor. It then traveled internationally
4 4 Russell Lynes, New Glass: A Worldwide Survey (Coming, New York: The Coming
Museum of Giass, 1979), 25.
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to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Le Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris;
and to Japan, marking the first time American studio glass was shown there.
At the last minute another venue was added: the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York. Presenting an edited version of the original, this fortuitous exhibition was
due to the interest of curator Penelope Hunter-Stiebel in studio glass. Described by
R. Craig Miller, her successor,
[o]ne o f her most important acts was to show the 1979 Coming exhibition,
Glass: A Worldwide Survey, [sz'c] at the Metropolitan. Many contemporary
observers such as Helen Drutt, as well as Michael and Douglas Heller have
cited this New York venue as a major turning point in winning acceptance for
contemporary glass among collectors.4 5
Doug Heller further stated that the exhibition “was a landmark exhibition in many
ways,” and felt that the validation from the Met could not have come at a better time
or from a better institution.4 6 Dealer Ferd Hampson also “credits [it] as the single-
most important exhibit that occurred in glass in years.”4 7
Additional impact from the exhibition was due to the lavishly illustrated 288-
page catalogue, which stimulated attention from private and institutional collectors.
Although essentially a picture book with brief biographical data on the artists and
statements from each juror, the catalogue did provide enticing pictures and a
modicum of data. Collectors George and Dorothy Saxe remember seeing the
4 5 See R. Craig Miller, “Betwixt and Between: Contemporary Glass in American Art
Museums,” The Glass Art Society Journal (1991): 31. Helen Drutt was an influential
dealer in Philadelphia.
4 6 Tina Oldknow, Pilchuck: A Glass School (Seattle: Pilchuck and University of
Washington Press, 1996), 166.
4 7 Tina Oldknow, Pilchuck: A Glass School (Seattle: Pilchuck and University of
Washington Press, 1996), 166.
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240
catalogue at a friend’s house, leafing though it, and being attracted to the medium.
For a time, this publication served as a guidebook for collectors.
Another source o f attention for glass was the notice it received from the high
art press. The third Americans in Glass exhibition held at Leigh Yawkey Woodson
Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin, in 1984 garnered such attention. Robert Silberman
wrote a feature-length article for Art in America in March 1985 that included 20
images o f glass from the exhibition. Presented under the heading “Decorative Arts
‘Americans in Glass’: A Requiem?,” the article reflected the jurors' statements
questioning the future of the medium. Describing glass as “almost fatally attractive,”
Silberman quoted Museum of Modem Art design curator J. Stewart Johnson
suggesting that the exhibition itself might prove to be a “requiem” for glass due to its
perceived lack of quality.
While the attention was condescending and critical, Silberman perceptively
highlighted another concern that faced the newly emerging studio glass movement:
the issue o f the “good glass artist” as opposed to the “good artist.” Silberman
unequivocally urged that "studio glass artists not be assimilated into the fine arts
world for they would lose their unique traditions." 4 8 While many in the glass
community sought inclusion, he believed that it would mean abandoning something
4 8 Robert Silberman, “Decorative Arts ‘Americans in Glass’ A Requiem?,” Art in
America 73, No. 3 (March 1985): 47.
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241
that was inherent within the medium. Such sensitivity to the long history of glass
was rare in the high art world.4 9
In 1987 a multimedia exhibition from Oklahoma took center stage in the craft
and glass worlds, and it, too, garnered an important critical review. The Philbrook
Museum of Art in Tulsa mounted an exhibition entitled The Eloquent Object: The
Evolution o f American Art in Craft Media since 1945 by a husband-and-wife team,
curator Marcia Manhart and ceramist-dealer Tom Manhart. Funded by Mobil Oil
Corporation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National
Endowment for the Arts (in addition to state and local agencies), the exhibition
united curatorial validation with gallery interests.5 0
Considered a typical example of the “craft survey shows” common during the
period, the exhibition presented items made in all craft media. More comprehensive
than insightful, 142 artists were represented by one item each, which purported to
stand for their entire oeuvre. The catalogue reflected the then-current thought about
crafts, ranging from opinions formed in the 1960s (expressed by retired Craft
Horizons editor Rose Slivka) to a high art world perspectives that sought to define
craft one-dimensionally in relationship to that world (presented by critic Lucy
Lippard, curator Mary Jane Jacobs, and critic John Perreault). In a further effort to
equate craft with “art,” bone fide artists from the high art world— Robert Ameson,
4 9 Robert Silberman, “Decorative Arts ‘Americans in Glass’ A Requiem?,” Art in
America 73, No. 3 (March 1985): 47.
5 0 Marcia and Tom Manhart, eds., The Eloquent Object. The Evolution o f American
Art in Craft Media since 1945 (Oklahoma: The Philbrook Museum o f Art and the
University of Washington Press, 1987).
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Peter Voulkos, Judy Chicago, Stephen DeStaebler, and John Mason— were placed
along side many who were known only within the craft community. Out o f all those
presented, twelve were studio glass artists.si
While the exhibition did not travel nationally which would have increased its
impact, it did receive a stinging critique from the high art press. A review entitled
‘“The Eloquent Object’ Gagged by Kitsch” was written by publisher Derek Guthrie
and appeared in his New Art Examiner magazine. Guthrie stated categorically that
the objects are selected and arranged primarily to carry the intellectual
pretensions o f the curators and so to prove that craft objects have indeed
evolved beyond their lowly origins... the stale smell of brokered consensus
permeates the book and dominates the exhibition.5 2
In much the way that negative reviews furthered the recognition of new art
movements in the nineteenth century, this review focused attention and implied that
there was something worth talking about in the craft arena. Indeed, the intensity of
the comments indicated that crafts (and studio glass) were gaining on the high arts
and needed to be beaten back.
Finally, one book was published that helped the marketing of glass and
served to correct the history of the movement. In 1989 The Coming Museum of
5 1 The artists were Hank Murta Adams, Howard Ben Tre, Dale Chihuly, David
Huchthausen, Kreg Kallenberger, Dominick Labino, Marvin Lipofsky, Harvey
Littleton, Tom Patti, Richard Posner, Mary Shaffer and Thermon Statom. This
group represented the leading glass artists of the day.
5 2 Derek Guthrie, The Eloquent Object’ Gagged by Kitsch” New Art Examiner 16,
No.l, (September, 1988): 26-29. It is interesting to note that Guthrie uses the
Greenbergian cudgel of “kitsch” based on Clement Greenberg’s 1939 essay “Avant
Garde and Kitsch” to deny the validity of crafts as an art medium. Indeed, the other
articles in that issue of the New Art Examiner were also devoted to deflating the
potential for clay as an art medium.
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243
Glass produced a permanent collection catalogue written by Susanne K. Frantz
(then curator of contemporary glass) entitled Contemporary Glass: A World Survey
from The Coming Museum o f GlassP It was the first book to focus on glass and the
first to acknowledge the work of proto-studio glass artists before the early 1960s and
the Toledo Workshops. Lavishly illustrated, Frantz’s book had the advantage of
drawing on Coming’s vast holdings o f glass and the extensive archival and primary
data in their library. Presented in “coffee table,” large-scale format, the book marries
the visual appeal of glass to the scholarly form of a permanent collection catalogue.
Frantz’s book was the first to present American studio glass with the intellectual
rigor usually seen applied to other media.
Creation of the Secondary Market: Dealer Resales and Public Auctions
Before 1970 contemporary avant garde art was seldom auctioned by the large
national and international auction houses— and studio glass not at all. However, the
importance of the growth of a secondary market to the success and wide reception of
American studio glass cannot be overestimated. Donna Schneier, consultant to
Sotheby’s auction house for fine craft and a dealer who focuses on the secondary
market, stated “if you don’t have a secondary market, you don’t have a primary
5 3 A permanent collection catalogue documents the items that are part of the
permanent collection o f a museum. In contrast, exhibition catalogues present a
thesis about a set of works, either owned by the museum or on loan to it for this
purpose. The Frantz book stands in sharp contrast to Dan Klein’s Glass: A
Contemporary Art (New York: Rizzoli, 1989), which contains factual errors, does
not recognize the role o f the proto-studio glassmakers and used unattributed
photography pirated from private collectors and museums.
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market.”54 While the primary market features objects sold for the first time at a
set retail price by the maker usually through a dealer or shop owner to a collector;
the secondary market features objects that are resold by dealers or auction houses to
collectors for a price that is not predetermined. Sales o f contemporary art made on
the secondary market can affect the gallery retail market because when a
contemporary work is resold, it does not have an established retail value or many
prospective purchasers. Both factors can cause the prices to be low. An uncertain
secondary market can spook collectors and undermine the primary market.5 5
The secondary market for studio glass exists in two forms: dealers who resell
work through their galleries (referred to as “backroom sales”) and public auctions
held by dealers or dedicated auction houses. Both forms are derived from those
found in the high art world. The two types differ in significant ways. Backroom sales
are private with the prices known only to the dealer, artist, and buyer. Auctions are
5 4 Karen S. Chambers, “Secondary Market: Going, Going, Gone or Coming,
Coming, Coming?” Neues Glas 4 (Fall 1995): 43.
55 Another method o f purchasing art involves direct commissions. Often an intricate
arrangement, the client would contact the artist (often through the artist’s dealer) to
establish what the general form that finished piece would take. After agreeing, the
artist then produces the work. A number of studio glass pieces have been
commissioned. Private glass collectors Anne and Ronald Abramson o f Washington,
D.C., underwrote the commissioning of architectural elements and sculpture, that
they then loaned to public and private venues. Glass artist Dan Dailey designed and
fabricated a complete dining room suite with room panels, a table, and chairs for
Bemie and Mimi West o f Los Angeles under the guidance of Ruth Summers.
Institutions also commissioned pieces. The Los Angeles County Museum o f Art
Commissioned a chair from Thermon Statom (b. 1953) in 1987 funding it with a
grant from the museum’s Black American Artist Fund. By 1977 the process was
sufficiently widespread to warrant publication in the Glass Art Society Newsletter of
an attorney-authored sample “commission agreement” between artist and collector.
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245
public, and although the purchaser may not be known, the price paid becomes
part of the public record. For this reason auctions can threaten retail gallery sales.
The secondary market for studio glass began in the back rooms of glass
galleries. Clients were usually collectors who wanted to upgrade or augment their
holdings with a rare early work. The sellers usually had purchased early and wanted
to cash in on their prescient selections. Such sales can reveal the strength of a market
as in the case o f a Harvey Littleton work that originally sold for $1,400 and was then
resold by Heller Gallery in 1994 for $7,500.5 6 The price increase was influenced by
the increased viability of the studio glass movement, Littleton’s advancing age, the
fact that he ceased making glass in the early 1980s, and the imprimatur of the Heller
Gallery as New York’s leading studio glass venue. Other factors that affect resale
price include the quality of the specific work and the prestige o f the previous owner.
Because most resales are undertaken to trade a good piece for a better one, however,
the best works seldom appear in this market. Unlike the developed market for Old
Masters (which is in reality a secondary market), contemporary material tends to
move down in price and quality at this secondary level, leaving the primary (dealer)
market with an enduring edge. In the unusual case of a fine studio glasswork coming
on the market, however, it can bring a price that exceeds the original retail.
Different realities govern the other manifestation of the secondary market:
the public auction. Auctions are mounted by galleries or dedicated houses in both
regional and urban settings, and they can be semi-public or very public affairs. One
5 6 Karen S. Chambers, “Secondary Market: Going, Going, Gone or Coming, Coming,
Coming?” Neues Glas 4 (Fall 1995): 47.
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semi-public auction dedicated to studio glass was held at the Pilchuck Glass
School in 1978. A spur of the moment affair put on at the end of the 1978 school
season, the auction was a response to the impeding loss o f financial backing from
Pilchuck’s cofounder John Hauberg and was essentially a private event with only
board members and staff attending. However, sensing the potential for sustained
revenue from auction sales, the next year Pilchuck organized a formal auction at the
Pilchuck lodge. A public, festive occasion, the event featured artist Patrick
Reynteins, dressed in a kilt, presiding as auctioneer. Large items sold for as much as
$1,000, and the sale netted $9,000.5 7 While it was an auction in format, it was in
reality more akin to primary market activity as the works were new and moving from
the artist to the collector for the first time. Pilchuck’s move toward a secondary
market did not produce a stampede of national or international studio glass auctions.
However, by the late 1980s large international auction houses (e.g., Christie’s
and Sotheby’s) did became interested in studio glass. With art values high and the
market seemingly insatiable, glass seemed a ready medium for auction attention. The
first auction of American studio glass was held on Feburary 13, 1989, in New York
and featured 160 items made mostly after 1985. The sale, however, was not
prompted by the desire to test the secondary market but rather came about as a result
of a court order that impelled the American National Bank of Cleveland to sell its
corporate collection as part settlement of an embezzlement case involving its Ohio
owners, Ted and Kay Evans. Despite the dramatic circumstances occasioning it, the
5 7 Tina Oldknow, Pilchuck: A Glass School (Seattle: Pilchuck and University of
Washington Press, 1996), 167. In time the Pilchuck auction would become a premier
event and a reliable source of funds for the school.
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247
mood surrounding the event (always important to the success o f an auction) was
euphoric. Being the first such auction and one brought about by extremely unusual
circumstances, Kathleen Guzman, president of Christie's East and a specialist in
decorative arts and lower end fine arts, said that she was “relieved” that “all but three
[lots were] well sold.”5 8
While the results exceeded the low estimates and netted over half a million
dollars, the hammer prices unfortunately made retail gallery prices appear inflated.5 9
This did not please the glass community. The fact that the works sold were of uneven
quality and not in pristine condition exposed second-rate material to the public and
potentially threatened to damage future primary and secondary markets.6 0 Indeed
while the results were respectable, this attempt to make glass a staple of the auction
scene proved premature, and it failed to establish an enduring commercial auction
market for studio glass.
As already shown at Pilchuck, however, auctions were an appealing vehicle
for fundraising. With the inherent drama of competing bids winding higher and
higher, auctions provided several elements that appealed to collectors: an art-related
5 8 Karen S. Chambers, “Secondary Market: Going, Going, Gone or Coming, Coming.
Coming?” Neues Glas 4 (Fall 1995): 43.
5 9 See Susanne K. Frantz, “The Evolution of Studio Glass Collecting and
Documentation in the United States,” Davira Taragin, ed., Contemporary Crafts and
the Saxe Collection (Toledo: The Toledo Museum of Art and Hudson Hills Press,
1993), 21-89.
6 0 Due to its complicated optical properties, glass looses most of it value if it is
broken or chipped. Unlike clay that can be repaired and appear the same, glass never
does.
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248
entertainment activity, the thrill of the chase, and the potential of owning a unique
glass object. Coupled with fundraising for a worthy cause, charity auctions led the
development o f the secondary market for studio glass. By adding the charitable
aspect to the equation (with the added factor of a tax benefit), modest hammer prices
could be construed as non-threatening to the still wobbly retail market.
So, on April 10, 1989, Christie’s Auctioneers held a stand-alone studio glass
auction entitled “Masterworks of Contemporary Glass” to benefit the New York
Experimental Glass Workshop (later Urban Glass), Brooklyn, New York. The sale
featured 89 pieces of contemporary work and was accompanied by a full-color
catalogue. While the idea was proposed by William Warmus, former curator of
contemporary glass at The Coming Museum of Glass and then-editor of New Work
glass magazine published by the Workshop, the sale was managed by opera singer
turned modem glass dealer and former Christie’s London Director of 20th Century
Decorative Arts, Dan Klein.6 1 A collector of mid-century, high-end production glass
and studio glass, Klein first auctioned studio glass through Christie’s London in the
1980s. Although not mentioned in the glowing introduction to the catalogue, the idea
was initially met with resistance from Nancy McClelland, of Christie’s New York.
6 1 Dan Klein pegs the beginning of the commercialization o f crafts to the successful
sale of work by British-based ceramists Hans Coper and Lucie Rie in London in
1986. This opened up the notion that craft-based works could demand price similar
to those seen for paintings and sculpture. Dan Klein, “Buying New Glass the Second
Time Around” The Glass Art Society Journal, (1987): 32-36.
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249
She stated that “it would be over her dead body that she would sell glass on Park
Avenue.”6 2
Nonetheless, the sale proceeded and achieved interesting results. A piece by
Italian studio glassmaker Gianni Tosi sold for $26,000 — twice the retail price for his
work, because it was the last of a series and two collectors wanted it to complete
their holdings. Another work Buddha (1988) by German artist Erwin Eisch exceeded
its estimate of $4,000 to $5,000 and sold for $6,200 to Marilyn Giick who
subsequently donated it to the Indianapolis Museum of Art (Fig. 28). The price was
achieved in part because Eisch’s work was relatively scarce on the American market
and he was associated with the high art Spur group in Munich and helped to found
the related Radama group.6 3 In contrast, works by Harvey Littleton and David
Huchthausen fell well below their estimates. With seminal names failing to reach
their goals, collectors worried if their beloved glass would turn out to be a wise
financial investment.
6 2 Karen S. Chambers ‘Secondary Market: Going, Going, Gone or Coming, Coming,
Coming?” Neues Glas 4 (Fall 1995): 44.
6 3 The Spur group thrived between 1957 and 1972 in Western Europe. They believed
that capitalism produces consumers who do not actively participate in public life.
Radama is a group that was aligned with the “Movement for an Imagist Bauhaus.”
See Martha Drexler Lynn, Masters o f Contemporary Glass: Selection from the Glick
Collection (Indianapolis: Hudson Hills and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1997),
60-62, and passim.
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Fig. 28. Auction Catalogue Picture of Buddha, 1988 by Ewin Eisch (German,
1927) with original auction notes by Indianapolis Museum o f Art decorative arts
curator Barry Shiftman. This work exceeded its estimate and sold for $6,200 at the
April 10, 1989 Christie’s New York auction to the Marilyn Glick who subsequently
donated it to the Indianapolis Museum o f Art.
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Despite the results, Christie’s persevered but chose to change how it
presented glass.6 4 On October 4, 1989 it held an auction o f the Martin and Jean
Mensch Collection of Contemporary Glass, which was inserted as part of a sale of
contemporary paintings, drawings, and sculpture. The practice of lacing studio glass
in among other contemporary artworks became the custom as it seemed to lend
veracity to the art status of studio giass. O f note in this auction was an early studio
piece by Joel Philip Myers entitled Dr Zarkhov’ s Tower (1971) which was purchased
by the Glicks for the Indianapolis Museum of Art (Fig. 29). While the results of this
sale could be characterized as good, the art market suffered a recession beginning in
1990, and demand for all contemporary arts decreased.6 5 Even though studio glass
had not proven to be a “money maker,” the large, international urban auction houses
did not completely abandon it. In 1995 Dan Klein expressed his faith in the future of
the secondary market noting “ its going to be a great market, but the question is
when. I may not be around to see it.”6 6
6 4 Paul and Elmerina Parkman, “The Rise o f Glass Art: A Personal View,” The Glass
Art Society Journal (1991): 44 - 48.
6 5 In 1992 Sotheby’s New York entered the glass market under the guidance of
Barbara Deisroth who believed that is was a slowly developing market that would
mature in ten or fifteen years. Christie’s Guzman still includes works in
contemporary art sales, but she features established glass names that have crossed
over and are familiar to contemporary paintings and sculpture collectors. Studio
glass has also been presented either in contemporary art sales or in decorative arts
sales. Habatat Gallery also organized three auction sales, the first in 1994 with 90
percent of the lots consisted of work from the 1970s and 1980s.
6 6 Karen S. Chambers, “Going, Going, Gone or Coming, Coming, Coming?” Neues
Glas 4 (Fall 1995): 49. Since 1990 the auction market has produced some good
results. In 1994 the cast glass Head I (1957-8) by Czech glass artists Stanislav
Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova sold at Sotheby’s in Feburary 1994 for $14,950.
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253
Fig. 29. Dr. Zarkhov’ s Tower, 1971, Joel Philip Myers (United States, b., 1934),
Blown glass with gold luster, glued, and gilded metal base (replacement). On
October 4, 1989, Christie’s New York auctioned the Martin and Jean Mensch
Collection of Contemporary Glass, and this work was purchased by the Glicks for
the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Thirteen months later in March 1995, it was auctioned again for $20,700. Several
years earlier the Heller Gallery had offered the work for $200.
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254
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255
Studio Glass Periodicals, 1975 to 1990
As the market for studio glass grew so did the market for periodical literature
relating to it. As a result several periodicals devoted to studio glass were founded
during the period 1975 to 1990. This joined the available gallery announcements,
dealer catalogues, and museum exhibition catalogues, but were unique in providing
more timely information. Periodicals also presented the dealers with a vehicle in
which to feature glossy color images o f their wares. For this reason magazines
contributed to the commodification of glass.
As noted in Chapter 3, the earliest craft magazines were aimed at the
practitioners and featured how-to advice instead of discussions about content or
aesthetics. Occasionally articles about historical or contemporary glass appeared in
the general craft publication Craft Horizons (later American Craft). By the early
1970s, however, glass had inspired a group o f medium-specific publications. Glass
Arts Magazine (renamed Glass in 1977) was founded in 1973. Presented as a
bimonthly, the first issues were produced by glassmaker Albert Lewis from his
studio in Oakland, California. In 1977 the magazine initiated the Fragile Art
competition and attracted six-hundred entries. By 1980 the number had fallen to 175
indicating that other outlets for glass artists had developed. By 1983 the publication,
which had described itself as “the art magazine that’s readable” ceased publication.6 7
6 7 Susanne K. Frantz, “The Evolution of Studio Glass Collecting and Documentation
in the United States,” Davira Taragin, ed., Contemporary Crafts and the Saxe
Collection (Toledo: The Toledo Museum of Art and Hudson Hills Press, 1993), 28.
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256
Other publications followed. Glass Studio was founded in 1978 but was
published only intermittently after 1983. New Work magazine, created in 1980 by the
New York Experimental Glass Workshop (later Urban Glass), focused on aesthetic
issues, tapping into the growing interest in glass as an art medium. The magazine
was renamed Glass in 1990 (unrelated to the earlier Glass magazine). Finally, the
bilingual Neues Glas impacted American glass with its occasional articles about
American artists and by setting a high benchmark for the critical analysis applied to
the work presented. Published quarterly in German and English, it continued the
long- standing European, particularly German, interest in historical glass, and by
extension, contemporary glass.
A periodical created specifically for studio glass collectors also emerged.
Glass Focus, published by Beverly M. Copeland & Associates, is the official
newsletter of the collector-oriented Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass. Sporting
no lush pictures or advertising and presenting no scholarly perspective, the
newsletter carried reportage, interviews with artists, collectors, and dealers. As part
of a plan to expand the audience for glass, the publication is provided free to
curators, critics, and others who might further the acceptance of glass. The rationale
for this and its impact on the collector community will be reviewed in Chapter 5.
While these new glass publications featured color photographs,
advertisements for galleries, and articles about artists, few attempted to place glass
within a critical framework. With writing focused on biographical, descriptive, and
technical data rather than analysis, they provided beautiful pictures and little
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257
theorizing. It should be noted that all of these magazines were available only by
subscription and, hence, were not widely accessible to the general public.
Finally, beginning in 1976 the artist-based Glass Art Society published The
Glass Art Society Newsletter to document the activities o f its yearly conferences. By
1979 the publication was renamed The Glass A rt Society Journal. 6 8 As studio
glassmaking became more sophisticated, the Journal’ s emphasis on technical
know-how and the review o f educational programs gradually gave way to
discussions of the interrelationships among art, craft, and design. The journal
continues today and is a primary resource for dealers, collectors, and curators.
Limited Success: Crossovers from Glass to High Art
An important boost to the increased commodification and presumed validity
o f glass as an art medium came from the high art world. This was the result of a two-
way phenomenon with established artists choosing to work with glass and hence
temporarily joining the studio glass world and conversely with a select few glass
artists moving into the ranks o f the high art galleries.
For the established artists, the use o f glass was mainly predicated on its
optical features. Consequently, artists Vito Acconci, Nicolas Africano, Larry Bell,
Lynda Benglis, Laddie John Dill, Donald Lipski, Italo Scanga, John Torreano, James
Turrell, and Christopher Wilmarth, among others, have either used glass in
6 8 This is not to be confused with the Journal o f Glass History published by The
Coming Museum of Glass which deals exclusively with historical glass.
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conjunction with other media or by itself as an medium for artistic expression.
As noted in the introduction, these practitioners cannot be classified as studio glass
artists because they only “visited” the medium and relied upon others for fabrication.
Additionally, their primary identity did not lie with glass or the studio community
But the use of glass had a positive impact on the acceptance of glass as an art
medium. This “crossing over” to glass even for a limited period of time, introduced
the notion that the boundary between glass and high art was permeable and spawned
the idea that studio glass artists could cross the other way into high art.
The first steps in this process occurred when these “visitors” interacted with
the glass community in order to better understand how to work with the medium and
to appreciate its expressive potential. Some artists attended workshops on glass-
forming technology held at Pilchuck Glass School. These included Nicolas Africano,
Laddie John Dill, Donald Lipski, John Torreano and James Turrell. Christopher
Wilmarth was a second session artist-in-residence at Pilchuck in 1984, as was Lynda
Benglis in 1984 and 1985 when she explored the making o f glass knots from cast
glass. Larry Bell, Donald Lipski, and Italo Scanga, among others, also attended
6 9 Other artists who have used glass are: Josef Albers, Arman, Alexander Calder,
Joseph Cornell, Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Felix Droese, Lucio Fontana,
Barbara Hepworth, Wassily Kandinsky, Mario Merz, Henry Moore, Meret
Oppenheim, Lucas Samaras, Robert Smithson, DeWain Valentine, and David Smith.
In an astonishing stretch, The American Craft Museum even claims that Jackson
Pollack worked in glass, because o f the single photograph by Helmut Newton of the
artist painting on plate glass.
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Glass Art Society conferences and made presentations at them.7 0 This placed
established artists in the studio glass world and fostered an exchange of view points.
Movement from the studio world to the high art world was less frequent but
more significant. In the 1975 to 1990 period the most visible o f those who entered
the high art world was rising star Dale Chihuly. Chihuly’s acceptance was signaled
by his representation by the Charles Cowles Gallery, New York. Charles Cowles was
bom in Los Angeles and had been exposed to modem art from an early age though
his father, Gardener Cowles, who served as a trustee at the Museum of Modem Art,
New York, for thirty years. After studying journalism at Stanford University, Charles
landed a job at the then-new high art magazine Artforum. After moving the magazine
to Los Angeles in 1965 and then to New York in 1967, Cowles gained further
familiarity and insight into the contemporary art scene through a friendship with
legendary New York, high art dealer Leo Castelli.
After 10 years at the magazine Cowles was persuaded to take a job as
founding curator o f the modem department at the Seattle Museum o f Art.
Completing a five-year stint with the museum, he returned to New York and took
over Andre Emmerich’s former space at 420 West Broadway. With his credentials
established in the museum/collector world and the dealer/critic community, Cowles
had sufficient standing to successfully introduce art made of non-sanctified mediums
to the high art world of New York City.
7 0 See James Turrell, “Light in Space” Glass Art Society Journal (1983-4): 5-10,
Melinda Wortz, “Larry Bell,” Glass Art Society Journal (1986): 58-61, Neil
Goodman, “Vito Acconci,” Glass Art Society Journal (1986): 118.
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260
His choice o f Chihuly as the centerpiece of his move into glass was
understandable, as Chihuly was easily the most well-known of the studio glass
artists. His appealing color-saturated works and his own aggressive marketing of
them, resulted in Chihuly quickly emerging as an artist with compelling talent, a
flair for showmanship, and high art ambitions.7 1 While at the Seattle Museum of
Art, Cowles worked with Chihuly during the course of curating an exhibition that
featured work by Chihuly, along with that of Italo Scango and Jamie Carpenter -
Carpenter, Chihuly, Scanga 1977. Easily matching Chihuly’s ambition, Cowles
championed his work and quickly charged $25,000 to $30,000 for Chihuly’s
table-sized pieces, with larger working priced higher.
By showing the works along side painting and sculpture and giving them
non-craft prices, Cowles moved Chihuly across the boundary that separated glass
from the high art fraternity. Cowles further underscored this new position for
Chihuly (and differentiated himself from the other glass galleries) by not using the
word “glass” in exhibition titles, but substituting instead the word sculptures.
Verbal slight of hand would also be applied to exhibitions by glass artist Howard
Ben Tre.7 2
The introduction of Chihuly to the New York high art world in the mid-
1980s moved glass to another level, first by placing it on a par with painting and
sculpture and second by garnering (limited) high art press notice. The press
7 1 Donald Kuspit, Chihuly (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997).
7 2 At the time only Howard Ben Tre had also crossed over in to the high art world by
joining the Charles Cowles Gallery. Tom Patti, Dan Dailey, and Paul Stankard would
eventually find high art gallery representation.
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acknowledgment, however, was motivated not by a desire to proselytize for the
medium but rather because failing to report a Cowles opening would mean
overlooking the activities of a significant gallery. The united status o f Chihuly
and Cowles created the success o f both. In time it encouraged well-respected art
critics (e.g., Carter Ratcliff and Kim Levin among others) to write for glass-
centered magazines such as New Work (later Glass) and prompted Robert
Silberman to review studio glass exhibitions. All o f this gave currency to the
belief that glass could and should be included within the high art universe.
Other benefits flowed from the crossover by Chihuly and others. First, it
helped to attract an audience to glass that was different from the one that
frequented the studio glass galleries. Second, the new collectors were
accustomed to paying higher prices for artwork and were comfortable with large-
scale pieces. And finally, the new audience was less prone to emphasizing the
inherent physical properties o f glass.
Much o f Chihuly’s appeal to the high art world was the fact that his work
could be linked (seemingly) to that of artists they already accepted. Curator
Henry Geldzahler placed Chihuly within the American watercolor tradition,
Color Field Painting School and connected his work to the “veils o f Morris
Louis, the chevrons and stripes of Kenneth Noland, and the large stained
chromatic landscapes of Helen Frankenthaler.” 7 3 While this vetting of
7 3 As quoted in Donald Kuspit, Chihuly (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997),
42.
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Chihuly’s work through high art parallels was helpful to him, it contained a nettle
for the field.
Validating glass in term usually reserved for painting and sculpture,
placed it in the position of having to conform to standards that negated its long
history and essential materiality. This development was what Robert Silberman
feared for glass as it eagerly adopted high art marketing practices and sought
commercial parity. The price for success seemed to require subsuming its distinct
identity both as a medium and a lifestyle.
With glass increasingly accepted by the marketplace as an art commodity,
one more element was needed to assure its status as art. This would come from
the other half of the commodity equation, the private and public collectors. The
final requisite for studio glass achieving bona fide art status was to come from
this group and will be reviewed in the next chapter.
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Part I American Studio Glass Movement: Commodification and Patronage,
1975 to 1990
Chapter 5: Passion for Glass: Private and Public Patronage, 1975 to 1990
Glass appeals to the cool instincts of librarians, curators and collectors. The
hermetic display case that seals in the objects, the glossy exhibition catalog,
the exclusive conference: all conspire to elevate, conserve, and purify the
objects. 1
William Warmus
The creation of a community of patrons dedicated to the advancement of the
American studio glass movement was the second major achievement of the 1980s.
Coinciding with the expansion of a network o f dealers (as outlined in Chapter 4) the
emergent collecting community was comprised of two distinct groups: private
individuals, and public collecting and curators employed by public institutions.
Corporate collecting became the third blended group featuring elements from both
private and public modes.
All collectors, private or public, select from the same pool of works, but the
criteria they use to make acquisitions differ, thus each glass collection is clearly
distinguishable and has contributed its own unique way to the increased acceptance
of the medium. To illustrate this phenomenon, representative collections from each
of the categories— chosen on the basis of their impact on the overall movement— will
be examined. Their key attributes will be assessed; and the collectors identified with
1 William Warmus, “The Cool Fire of Venetian Glass,” Glass 61 (Summer 1997):
37.
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a discussion of how they collect and what motivates them to do so.2 Because the
formation o f privately held studio glass collections preceded the development of
public collections, they will be discussed first. Private studio glass collectors at once
resemble and differ from those who collect other forms of art. It is, however, their
unique qualities that have driven them to interact with each other and with validating
institutions, thereby creating a strong support base for glass, and encouraging its
acceptance as an art form.3
Profile of Studio Glass Collectors, 1975 tol990
The function o f craft in this stage o f the twentieth-century ought not to be the
silly caperings after exaggerated effects of quasi-art funded by the ignorance
of the nouveau riches anxious to become collectors.4
Peter Dormer
2 Within anthropology there are two kinds o f collectable commodities: alienable
commodities (mass-produced products with no prior social ties to influence the
nature of their exchange or the relationship o f those who traffic in them) and
inalienable objects (those that operate in a realm marked by social ties). Studio glass
falls into the second category because of its use as a social marker. See James
Carrier, Gifts and Commodities: Exchange in Western Capitalism since 1700
(London: Routledge, 1995).
3 As noted in Chapter 4 all collectors are influenced - especially in a new field such
as studio glass - by the galleries from which they purchase work. Dealers serve the
function of training both public and private collectors alike. This powerful position is
a phenomenon found in all contemporary art where bringing new talent to the
marketplace (a gatekeeper function) is paramount. As will be shown, the resulting
concentration of power within the marketing (and selecting) arm contributes to the
several distinctive qualities manifest in the private and public collections of
American studio glass.
4 Peter Dormer, “Running to Fat” as reprinted in the Glass Art Society Journal (1988)
: 22. First printed in “The Ideal World o f Vermeer’s Little Lacemaker,” in Design
after Modernism: Beyond the Object (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1988).
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265
The drive to collect is universal and is found in all cultures and all social
strata. Consequently, the literature analyzing this impulse is extensive.5 While a
complete examination of these writings is beyond the scope of this study, a look at
the essential attributes o f art collecting provides a framework for identifying and
assessing those qualities that are universal and for highlighting those that are unique
to collectors of studio glass.
Historian A. Deirdre Robson states that
[t]he main reasons for collecting art are characteristically, status (whether
involving social distinction or sociocultural conformity), cultural esteem or
cultural capital (whether from connoisseurship or from association with
“difficult” art forms), conspicuous consumption, decoration, investment and
speculation, vicarious creativity and, finally, the more nebulous ideas of
excitement, love o f beauty or pleasure.6
5 The literature purporting to explicate the practice o f collecting (motivation and
activity) appears in a number of disciplines: art, art history, psychology, sociology,
anthropology and consumer studies, to name a few. For theories and observations
that best apply to studio glass collectors during the 1975-1990 period, see “The
Problematics of Collecting and Display, Part 1 "A rt Bulletin 77, No. 1 (March
1995): 6-24, and “The Problematics of Collecting and Display, Part 2,” Art Bulletin
78, No. 2 (June 1995): 166-85. Also, Wemer Muensterberger, Collecting: An Unruly
Passion, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Susan M. Peace, Museums,
Objects, and Collection: A Cultural Study (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1992), Joseph Alsop, The Rare Art Tradition: The History o f Art
Collecting and Its Linked Phenomena (New York: Harper & Row, 1982); John Elner
and Roger Cardinal, The Culture o f Collecting (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1994), James Clifford “On Collecting Art and Culture,” Russell Ferguson,
ed., Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, (Cambridge: The MIT
Press, 1990); 141-169; Russell W. Belk, Collecting in a Consumer Society (London:
Routledge, 1995); and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton, The
Meaning o f Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981).
6 See A. Deirdre Robson, Prestige, Profit, and Pleasure: The Market fo r Modem Art
in New York in the 1940s and 1950s, (New York: Garland Publishers, 1995),81 and
257. Cultural capital is defined as the prestige of being associated with creativity
without any guarantee o f financial reward. The slippery notion of beauty and its
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When applied to studio glass collectors, these “reasons” maybe distilled to
yield five potent motivators: the desire for status (cultural capital), the wish to
accumulate unique and opulent objects for domestic decoration (enjoyment o f
conspicuous consumption), the hope for increased monetary value (investment
growth — discussed in chapter 4) and the pursuit of “excitement” and “love o f beauty
and pleasure” derived from the activity itself and the works collected.7 In addition
there are two other motivating factors not mentioned by Robson but crucial to the
character o f the studio glass community. They are the preference for contemporary
(as opposed to historical) art forms and the desire to participate in the social life that
unites glass collectors, artists, dealers, and institutional experts. As will be
demonstrated below, these seven goals are clearly manifest in the activities o f studio
glass collectors and shape their passion for the material.
impact on the art lover are discussed by Howard Becker in Art Worlds (Berkeley:
University o f California Press, 1982), 275-76.
7 Pierre Bourdieu investigated the sociology of high culture in Distinction: A Social
Critique o f the Judgement o f Taste (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).
Beginning where Imannuel Kant concluded in his Critique o f Judgment (1790),
Bourdieu’s definition o f a segmented cultural field places writers as artists versus
their position as producers o f commercial product. He also describes the separation
between the writing of text and the activity of evaluation and legitimation, with the
critic acting as a “metaliterati.” While this important separation o f roles applies to
studio glass, its the lack o f a meaningful critical voice has been noted by a number of
authors and continues today. Also Chandra Mukeiji “Artwork: Collection and
Contemporary Culture,” American Journal o f Sociology, 84, No. 2, (1978):348-365;
and Helmut K. Anheier, Jurgen Gerhard, and Frank Romo, “Forms of Capital and
Social Structure in Cultural Fields: Examining Bourdieu’s Social Topography,”
American Journal o f Sociology, 100, No. 4 (January 1995): 859-903.
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267
As a general rule studio glass collectors are middle-aged, married couples
of significant means, usually first-generation inherited or self-made money.8 The
community boasts more Jewish than Christian members. While collecting behaviors
can be traced in many cases to childhood, the move into glass generally occurs in the
middle years when parenting obligations have receded and financial resources are
secure.9 Drawn from the college-educated, professional classes (lawyers, doctors,
business executives, etc.), the glass-collecting couple typically elect to enter the field
together as a shared leisure-time activity. As noted before their preference is for
contemporary art. Studio glass, with its nascent theoretical underpinnings is well
suited to those for whom historical material holds few attractions.1 0 This preference
is related to the decorative potential of the studio glass medium and the fact that its
initial appreciation does not require an understanding of historical precedents or the
complexities o f art history and critical theory. Indeed, this affinity for contemporary
8 While the nature o f craft collecting is considered lowbrow (or middlebrow at best)
by the high art world, it does occur within the middle-class, with all three
constituencies involved (the artists, the dealers, and the collectors) being middle-
class. See Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow, Lowbrow: The Emergence o f Cultural
Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), Russell Lynes,
The Tastemakers: Shaping o f American Popular Taste, (New York: Dover
Publications, Inc., 1980), Adrian Forty, Objects o f Desire: Design and Society, 1750-
1980 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), and George E. Marcus, “ Middlebrow
into Highbrow at the J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles,” in Brenda Jo Bright and Liza
Bakewell, eds., Looking High and Low (Tucson: The University o f Arizona Press,
1995), 173-98.
9 From the Web site for the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass’ report of the Glass
Weekend panel “Paths of Glass: Choosing Your Collecting Strategies,” July 1999.
1 0 This is in contrast to those who collect historical production material
(Scandinavian, Italian, Germany, American) that does require historical perspective
and often language skills.
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art over the historical can even be seen in “[t]he way an individual handles
glass... using both hands, tense under white gloves, and with infinite care; or lifting
the object with outstretched hand in order to freely encourage a visitor to touch and
explore. One attitude lives in and for the past, the other in the now.”1 1
Because studio glass is a contemporary medium, collecting it requires only
the ability to select the “best” from a ever-changing array o f works, and thus more
closely related to fashion-driven decisions than to connoisseurship. The narrow
spectrum o f potential collectibles provides an immediacy that connects collectors to
the work as an expression of something new and fresh, as opposed to the old and
venerated. This preference has long been observed in middle-class collectors. As
Dianne Sachko Macleod has noted “the middle class propensity for buying the more
easily understandable art by living artists” wins over the demands of historical
material.1 2 This predilection is pronounced within the studio glass collecting
community.
1 1 William Warmus, “The Cool Fire of Venetian Glass,” Glass 67 (Summer 1997):
37.
1 2 Dianne Sachko Macleod, “Art Collecting and Victorian Middle-Class Taste,” Art
History 10, No. 3 (September 1987): 329. See Joseph Alsop, The Rare Art Tradition:
The History o f Art Collecting and Its Linked Phenomena Wherever These Have
Appeared (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 33-85; and Ragnar Johnson,
“Accumulation and Collecting: An Anthropological Perspective,” Art History 9, No.
1 (March 1986) 71-83.While any collection is improved by deeper knowledge of the
medium’s history and cultural milieu, only a few studio glass collectors approach
this benchmark of sophistication, which would have been mandatory for the great
British and German glass collectors of the nineteenth century. The contemporary
glass collector may or may not have a connoisseur’s eye, or a library of related
books, or wide knowledge of the other arts to guide selection.
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269
In order to join the community o f collectors, several basic criteria must be
met. First, the prospective collectors need ample discretionary income to support the
purchase o f several works each year; a commitment that would have during the
period under study entailed between 50 and 100,000 thousand dollars annually.
Second, they need to have the time and funds to travel to relevant museum
exhibitions, conferences, and galleries in pursuit of expanding their holdings. Third,
they must have a willingness to cultivate dealers, artists, and, eventually, museum
personnel.
The first motivator for the collecting of studio glass, the desire for cultural
capital (status and prestige), brings with it a central tension. The cultural capital
associated with studio glass is tenuous, for although dealers and collectors lead the
campaign to include glass in the high art world, its position is by no means secure.1 3
Consequently, studio glass collectors are inherently risktakers, and this in itself
contributes a layer of cultural esteem beyond that garnered by the collecting of other
media. It should be noted that risktaking is a behavior not usually associated with the
middle-class, but here the risk (again, ironically, related to the medium not the
content of the art) places the studio glass collector within the avant garde.
1 3 In societal terms, as outlined by Pierre Bourdieu, accumulation of culturally
significant collections accrues cultural capital to the owners. While this is true in the
case o f glass, the reality of glass having any lasting cultural capital has yet to be
proven. This does not prevent glass from operating as symbol of status, related
primitively to the dollars spent. Also its pretensions to art make it a marker that
seems to broadcast intimate knowledge of arcane “arts.” See Grant McCracken,
Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character o f Consumer
Goods and Activities (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 1988); and Steven W. Naifeh, Culture Making: Money Success and the New
York Art World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976).
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Consequently, their passion for glass is transformed into evidence of perspicacity
and bravery, which enhances their cultural capital.
Meanwhile the desire to display wealth through conspicuous consumption
tugs collectors in a more mundane direction. Most glass collectors are married, they
display their collections in their homes, presenting a thoughtfully constructed
domestic face to the world. Evidence o f this construction is seen in display practices
where domestic forms are paired with those borrowed from museums. The result is a
domestic space coded with both social and cultural signs: the domestic coffee table
boasts a Littleton, and the museum pedestals and vitrines flanking the sofa present
Chihulys and Labinos. While the domestic display implies intimacy, the reverential
strategies establish an intentional distance between the viewer and object,
underscoring high valuation, both monetary and social.1 4 Expressive of what
Macleod calls the “worship o f art,” this latter approach is typical of new, middle-
class collectors, who present their artworks in domestic “private art galleries (some
of which resemble the interiors of churches) and refer to the preeminent position held
by art in society.”1 5 The home is thereby transformed into a cultural-capital factory,
uniting everyday life with art and status in a cozy, middle-class domestic setting.1 6
1 4 In discussing the issues of the fragility and reception o f glass with Dr. Barry
Glassner at the University o f Southern California, he pointed out that glass was
usually stored away from little fingers and presented behind glass doors as a precious
(and presumed beautiful) commodity.
1 5 Dianne Sachko Macleod, “Art Collecting and Victorian Middle-Class Taste,” Art
History 10, No. 3 (September 1987): 332.
1 6 The taxonomy of social display is well known to collectors. Indeed the
“constellations of artifacts are structured, and culturally positioned, ways of
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Despite the cozy setting, studio glass collecting is motivated in part a the
desire for “excitement.” This is provided by the “thrill o f the chase,” the competitive
aspect of collecting that animates the locating and procuring of the “best.” The
competition is heightened by the small size of the community. Relative position is
measured by the quality (often determined by dollar amount spent) and frequency of
acquisitions. Prestige is awarded to those who exhibit unique insight (the early
purchase of an up-and-coming artist), display cunning and the ability to negotiate
(securing additional discounts from dealers), and receive extra attention from
knowledgeable curatorial and other institutional staff. Early acquisition o f work by
important artists— purchased for a reasonable price-coupled with a genial phone call
from the local curator or museum director signals high-level success within the
community.1 7 The excitement o f these activities is further enhanced by repeated
retellings of trials and triumphs: meeting the artist, getting to a first-name basis with
leading dealers, negotiating purchases, and even solving shipping dilemmas.
The desire for object-derived “pleasure or beauty,” however, is the most
powerful, and complicated motivator for the studio glass collector. These collectors
universally describe the visual impact that glass has on them. Indeed, it is this that
communicating some kinds of critically important cultural information” notes
Katherine C. Grier in Culture and Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle-Class
Identity, 1850-1930 (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution press, 1988) 8. Grier
discusses how display of objects in the Victorian parlor had clear symbolic meaning
for the owners and visitors. This symbolic language can be seen in the selection of
studio glass items displayed by private collectors.
1 7 See Russell W. Belk, “Possession and the Extended Self,” Journal o f Consumer
Research 15 (September 1988): 139-68.
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initially ignites their passion for the medium, often to the exclusion of the merit of
the work. This enchantment affects artists, too. Michael Taylor notes “[g]lass is
rarely the vehicle, the medium, for thoughtful reflection. The sheer physical
challenge of making anything in glass too frequently triumphs over content.”1 8 The
intense visual experience of glass, referred to by collectors and artists loosely as “its
beauty” or the “wow factor,” has little parallel in other crafts (or contemporary high
arts). Oral interviews, articles and museum catalogues are replete with passionate
statements from collectors about the beauty of glass and their attraction to it. When
stating why he purchased his first piece of studio glass, the president of a leading
West Coast university remembered with glowing eyes that it was “because when [he
and his wife] walked into the shop and it was so beautiful, they [s/c] had to buy it!
” 1 9 Similarly, collector George Saxe remembers that he “had never seen such colors
before nor such forms, all made from such ordinary material.”2 0 This attraction to
the material of glass establishes a unique bond between the collector and the work
that places understanding second to the emotional response.2 1
1 8 Michael Taylor, “Regional Glass Artists and Studios of Northwest New York
State,” Glass Art Society Journal (1991): 91.
1 9 Conversation with Dr. Steven Sample and Dr. Selma Holo, 1998.
2 0 Davira Tarrigin, “Selections from the George and Dorothy Saxe Collection at the
Toledo Museum of Art,” Glass Art Society Journal (1993): 129-30.
2 1 The issue of the visual appeal of glass is tendentious. With beauty being in the eye
of the beholder, any generalization linking glass and beauty as an absolute is difficult
to make. But most collectors (and artists) mention that glass captivated them visually
at some point and that this compelled their involvement. Artist Kreg Kallenberger
freely admits this seduction, but he “works hard not to ride on the back of its beauty”
(Conversation with the author, Asheville, North Carolina, 1995). Indeed, as noted by
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The social interactions that surround studio glass collecting also contribute
to “pleasure.” Participation in the small, self-selected, upscale, risktaking, glass-
smitten community provides a consuming round o f activities. Collector Benson
Pilloff amassed a fortune from his legal practice and soon after, he and his wife
discovered studio glass. They “loved” the work and enjoyed the artists and collectors
associated with it. Over time glass proved so compelling that they joined in all
aspects o f the community from assembling a collection, Mr. Pilloff participating as a
gaffer at glass events. In time they became officers of the Art Alliance for
Contemporary Glass, a nationwide organization. For the Pilloffs, studio glass
provided a community o f shared interests, a leisure-time activity (commensurate
with their financial resources), and augmented status.
Glass collectors, however, display at least one characteristic that separates
them from other collectors. They feel keenly that glass is undervalued by the high art
world, and they often turn their commitment to the medium into a campaign for the
acceptance o f glass as a high art medium. This attitude is seen in a communique sent
to glass collectors in Los Angeles in which the leader of the groups writes:
[w]e may not be doing something as important as cancer research or giving
shelter to the homeless, but as far as art is concerned, Studio Art Glass [sic] is
an incredible new movement in the art world and should be recognized and
represented by the finest museums . . . It is important that contemporary glass
glass scholar Dr. Christine Schroeder, “Glass— having an aesthetic all its own-
certainly entails danger for the artist. It is all too easy to get carried away by the
beautiful, but in the last resort simple decorative shine of the material,” “Metaphors
in Glass: The Role of Glass in Contemporary Art,” Neues Glas, 1 (1996): 10-17.
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should not be dismissed by the so-called elite o f the art world (that follow
each other like sheep) as craft.2 2
Clearly feeling that the limited acceptance for their beloved medium by the high art
world is the result o f snobbery, savvy glass collectors embarked on an aggressive
plan, the like of which has never been undertaken in the service of other craft media:
they began to aggressively proselytize for recognition by the art press and critics and
for representation in museum collections. A leader in this crusade is the collector-
oriented Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass.
The Alliance represents 850 members who are devoted to glass and desire its
recognition as a full-fledged art medium by the high art world. To that end they
inveigle curators who show an inclination toward glass, along with selected
journalists and critics, to attend the biannual “Glass Lover’s Weekend” at the
Creative Glass Center o f America, Millville, New Jersey, site of a nineteenth-century
glass factory and museum of glass artifacts. The event permits curators, without cost
to themselves or to their institutions, to attend this weekend, to interact with
colleagues, to meet dealers and collectors (who might donate to their collections),
and to see studio glass. As an additional fillip these validators are often invited to
participate in resume building colloquia and presentations. As curatorial success is
measured by ongoing acquisitions and expanding areas o f expertise, this strategy has
produced increased interest in studio glass, even among curators who did not
previously have active “craft” acquisition programs.
2 2 Letter from Anne Cohen, president of the Glass Alliance of Los Angeles,
November 29, 1999.
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To complete the seduction, the Alliance sends complimentary
subscriptions of the Glass Focus newsletter to 46 museums and 32 critics and
journalists to inform them of glass-related happenings at studio glass galleries and
museums. This thoughtfully constructed experience creates increased curatorial
awareness of glass as an art medium and permits glass collectors access to the
institutions that can validate their beloved artworks.
Private Collecting of American Studio Glass
From 1975 to 1990 the collecting community grew rapidly with those who
had assembled modest private collections (as described in Chapter 3) continuing to
augment their holdings. Two additional categories of private collectors emerged
during this period: the artist-collector and the “blue chip” collector. Artist-collectors
are few in number; they are comprised of artists who accumulate works made by
their colleagues.2 3 An example of this style of collecting may be seen in the activities
of Bill Brown, past director of Penland School, Asheville, North Carolina, who
amassed a collection of studio glass made by artists who came to work at his
institution from 1965 until his retirement in 1983.2 4 While not formed with public
2 3 It is a commonplace in arts that the first people to recognize the artistic potential of
new artists are peers, then teachers, and finally dealers. The collectors, public and
private, are at the end of the chain.
2 4 Private collectors can either be “accumulators” or “collectors.” Accumulators
assemble large numbers of objects without a unifying conceptual framework.
Collectors, on the other hand, have a unifying vision that establishes the
requirements for inclusion or exclusion. In the case of studio glass, this usually
implies that collectors have representative works by each important artist shown in
the New York galleries. In an interesting insight into the studio glass world, Jon C.
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display in mind, the collection was exhibited at Western Carolina University,
Cullowhee, North Carolina, in 1984. Harvey Littleton also acquired pieces by artists
who worked with him on his intaglio glass prints. Naturally, this very personal type
of collection does not express a formalized collecting vision, nor given friendship-
based nature of these assemblages, do they necessarily reflect a discriminating eye.2 5
However, while inclusion in such a collection is not generally listed on artist’s
resumes, it does provide important “internal” validation.
The “blue chip” collector-the other new type to emerge-combined passion
for the medium, ample resources, and most importantly, high art ambitions;
collectors of this sort proved to be effective proselytizers for glass. Gathering works
by the well-known glassmakers, purchased from the leading dealers across the
country and in Europe, blue chip collectors worked aggressively to win greater
exposure for glass and eventually museum validation.2 6 While there are a number of
Liebman, president of the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass, uses a generous
criteria for the term glass collector, he applies the term to refer to anyone who has a
few pieces of glass and who “loves” the medium. E-mail to the author, March 1999.
2 5 Clay artist Viola Frey calls her collection an “accumulation” and refers to it as a
library of visual solutions. See Joyce Lovelace, “ ‘I don’t Really Collect...’ Tales of
Artist's Possessions,” American Craft 55, No. 6 (December 1995/January 1996): 40-
45. Also, Jane Falconer Byrd interview with Bill Brown in April, 1984, originally
published in The Bill and Jane Brown Glass Collection (Cullowee, North Carolina:
Chelsea Gallery of Western Carolina University, 1984).
2 6 Among the noteworthy blue chip collectors are Ben Heinemann of Chicago, who
after a successful career in railroading amassed a fine collection of works. Daniel
Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser established another important collection in Los
Angeles. They also donated a selection o f works to the Los Angeles County Museum
of Art in 1985 and second group in 1999.
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9 7
collections that qualify as blue chip, two will be examined here. A unique
variant of this group, the blue chip collector who has direct financial ties to a studio
glass gallery, will also be discussed. Finally, one modest collection, embarked upon
after 1975 will be reviewed to assess the changed nature of that category of collector.
Typical of emerging blue chip glass collectors were George and Dorothy
Saxe who amassed a fortune during the northern California real-estate boom o f the
1970s and 1980s. They turned to collecting glass (and eventually other crafts) when
it was suggested by a counselor as a way to ameliorate tensions in their marriage.
Dorothy Saxe said later that she was attracted to craft because she liked the
“handmade objects — things you can touch and fondle and hold.” 2 9 After seeing
Young Americans: Clay/ Glass (1978) and The Coming Museum of Glass’
exhibition New Glass: A Woldwide Survey (1980), they purchased their first glass
piece, “which they candidly admit was acquired as a decorative accessory.”3 0 For the
Saxes glass (and craft) initially filled three needs: a shared leisure activity, a
decoration for their home, and an expression o f their material success.
2 7 It should be noted that this period also coincided with the unprecedented expansion
o f the high art market. While the reasons and manifestations of this are not the focus
o f the present study, the increased enthusiasm for contemporary art undoubtedly
influenced glass collecting.
2 8 Another by-product of their collecting activity was their involvement with the
national American Craft Council where both have served as members of the board.
2 9 Jesse Hamlin, “A Passion for Collecting Crafts,” San Francisco Chronicle, June
24, 1999, section E, page 1 and passim.
3 0 Robert Silberman, “The Art of Craft: Contemporary Works from the Saxe
Collection,” American Craft, 59, No. 5 (October/November, 1999): 78.
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278
Between 1980 and 1982 the Saxes acquired more than 150 works by 70
American and European glass artists. They describe their collaborative collecting
process in terms both visceral and intangible, “[we did] things very intuitively.
Sometimes we can’t explain why we like things. It gets us by the guts.”3 1 Here the
pleasure principle, coupled with the direct visual appeal of glass, cemented the
connection between the collector and the work. The desire to experience a continued
“rush” from the acquisition of new work compelled them to branch out into other
craft media when they found it difficult to discover new glass artists.
The Saxes were not interested in forming a historically based collection to
chronicle the development of American studio glass and instead chose to purchase
widely from currently made works on display at the leading glass galleries, notably
Heller in New York, Habatat in Michigan and Florida, and Kurland/Summers in Los
Angeles. By following their “guts,” their passion for the medium, and the lead of the
urban glass galleries, they (and others) created “a dealers’ collection” that included
almost exclusively the artists featured at the galleries they frequented. Although their
knowledge o f glass and the glassmakers deepened, the influence o f “certain
American dealers [make evident] what the Saxes have been exposed to, as in the
strong examples in the collection by Bertil Vallien and Ann W olff from Sweden,”
noted critic Robert Silberman.3 2
3 1 Jesse Hamlin, “A Passion for Collecting Crafts” San Francisco Chronicle, June 24,
1999, section E, page 1 and passim.
3 2 Robert Silberman, “The Art of Craft: Contemporary Works from the Saxe
Collection,” American Craft 59, No. 5 (October/November, 1999): 76. Bertil
Vallien and Aim (Warff) Wolff are European glassmakers who produce both factory
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279
Indeed, many blue chip glass collectors are described as exhibiting “a kind
of checklist-and checkbook-connoisseurship, using a major exhibition catalogue or
standard history book as a guide to be strictly followed.” 3 3 While the Saxes’
collection initially fell into this category, over time their collections of textiles and
jewelry expressed a maturation in understanding and exhibited a greater willingness
to make independent judgments. With relatively few outlets presenting studio glass
and a small pool o f artists, collections of this period are remarkably uniform. While
this occurs in other craft media, it is especially pronounced within studio glass.
By the mid-1980s, the Saxes had built a collection prominent enough to
warrant a museum exhibition. In 1986 Contemporary American and European Glass
from the Saxe Collection, curated by Kenneth R. Trapp, went on display at The
Oakland Museum in Oakland California, and traveled to the American Craft
Museum in New York. The accompanying 64-page catalogue presented seductive
color images and an essay that placed the works within the continuum of craft and
glass history.
As the Saxe collection grew and incorporated other media, it became evident
that it should be placed in a museum. From that perch it could be seen by greater
numbers and could also trumpet accrued institutional validation for studio glass.
and studio work. Introduced to the American glass collecting community by the
urban galleries, both artists works were placed in the prestigious American studio
glass collections.
3 3 Robert Silberman, “The Art of Craft: Contemporary Works from the Saxe
Collection,” American Craft 59, No. 5 (October/November, 1999): 76.
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280
There were no precedents for this, however, as no large collections o f studio glass
had at that time been donated to a top tier museum.
In an effort to find the right place for the all or part of the collection, the
Saxes contacted several curators in the United States. Unfamiliar with the unwritten
rules of donation quid pro quo, they soon grew frustrated with what they felt was the
limited response to their proposed gift. They later learned through their many
conversations with directors and curators that their request for extensive institutional
recognition was unattainable, due in part to the lack of respect for the medium and
the relatively low cost of amassing it. Ironically, even within the esoteric museum
world, a hard-headed parity between dollars spent and status awarded prevails.
One of these educational conversations, however, led the Saxes to contact
the Toledo Museum of Art in 1988 where they met then-director Roger Mandle to
discuss a possible donation.3 4 When David Steadman became director (after leaving
the directorship o f the glass-centered Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia), the
receptiveness to glass was heightened, and a deal was struck. The plan included the
donation of glass and other craft-media pieces to be selected by the Toledo curatorial
staff from the total Saxe collection. In return, the museum would publish a catalogue
of the donated works. This gift would mark the single largest and most important
acquisition of studio glass by a significant museum to date.
3 4 In 1988 Paul J. Smith, former director of the American Craft Museum suggested
that the Toledo Museum of Art contact the Saxes regarding the potential donation of
their collection. It is typical that it takes a number of contacts sustained over years to
produce the actual donation of artwork.
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In response to the requirement of the gift that a permanent collection
catalogue be produced, curator Davira Tarrigin challenged the conventions of craft
writing and proposed a catalogue that would contribute to the sparse scholarship. She
assembled a team o f scholars for each medium represented and asked them to discuss
the patterns manifest in the Saxes’ collecting. The catalogue Contemporary Crafts
and the Saxe Collection marked the first time the commodification o f American craft
and the process of assembling a craft collection had been chronicled.3 5 The transfer
of 63-glass (and other craft-media) objects from the Saxe Collection to the Toledo
Museum o f Art in 1990 made that collection, because of its strong historical glass
holdings, second only to The Coming Museum of Glass in importance to the studio
glass community. This acquisition and the appointment of Tarrigin as curator of
glass placed Toledo at the head o f the field after a 20-year absence.
All of this was important to the expanding acceptance of studio glass. Of
equal interest was the message contained in the Toledo Museum’s display
methodology. Where the so-called minor arts and high arts were exhibited side-by-
side in chronological groupings, effectively insuring that all galleries are jointly
curated. This strategy implies parity among art media and indicates a willingness to
accept glass as an established art medium. In this way the Saxe donation and the
Toledo Museum’s response to it set a benchmark for other museums to emulate.
3 5 See Davira Tarrigin “Selections from the George and Dorothy Saxe Collection at
the Toledo Museum of Art,” Glass Art Society Journal (1993); 129-130 and Davira
S. Tarrigin, ed., Contemporary Crafts and the Saxe Collection (Toledo: Hudson Hills
and the Toledo Museum of Art, 1993).
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The Saxe collection is typical of the post-1975 blue chip collections in
terms of its size, type, and its motivation. With over 100 pieces o f glass by the noted
glassmakers o f the period, it is a classic instance of “new money” placed at the
service of compelling personal goals and focused on new artistic expression. Their
ample financial resources, teamed with modest art expertise, meant that the Saxes
learned as they went, taking advantage of the small size of the glass community and
the unformed nature of the marketplace. This pioneering spirit turned out to be a
virtue in the new field of American studio glass. All of these factors ultimately
accrued to the benefit of the glass world when the Saxes’ donation compelled art
world acceptance.
A second blue chip collection, formed a bit later in the 1980s, was that of
Eugene and Marilyn Glick of Indianapolis. Largely the result o f Mrs. Glick’s
enthusiasm, but backed by Mr. Glick’s resources, the collection grew out of an
interest in contemporary art purchased to decorate their home and Mr. Glick’s office.
Although Marilyn Glick had been aware of studio glass since 1972 when she visited
the historical glass displays at the Toledo Museum of Art, it was not until friend and
collector Dorothy Gerson reintroduced her to it in the early 1980s that she became
smitten. The Glicks purchased their first piece in a dramatic way. While spending
time at their second home in Florida, Marilyn Glick acquired a Harvey Littleton
“arc” from the Holstein Gallery. As a work by the putative leader of the glass
movement, it was an ambitious beginning both aesthetically and financially.
For the Glicks, as with the Saxes, the desire to obtain original items with
which to decorate their home (or workplace) was the original impulse. But soon their
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glass collecting became an opportunity to secure a position of leadership in the
collecting community and to engender social interaction. “We love having people
come to our home to see the glass. Collectors, artists, students, teachers, museums’
staff and trustees come individually and by the bus load. I love to tell people about
glass and the artists” wrote Marilyn Glick in 1995.36 Once again, collecting glass
provided a vehicle for social connection and increased cultural esteem.
Hoping that there might be more she could learn about glass, Glick contacted
Robert Yassin, then director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and Penelope
Hunter-Stiebel, then curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to help guide the
formation o f her collection. At Hunter-Stiebel’s suggestion, Glick visited the top two
urban galleries, Heller in New York and Habatat near Detroit. While most of her
works were purchased through the established marketing channels, she showed
independence by sidestepping gallery etiquette and purchasing an early piece by
Dominick Labino (Fig. 30) directly from the artist. As her interest grew she made
regular trips to the leading glass galleries, including Kurland/Summers in Los
Angeles.
Soon the Glicks decided to begin the process of donating their collection to a
museum. To facilitate this Marilyn Glick began to sculpt the collection to conform
with institutional interests by collecting works by the leading artists in the field in
3 6 Martha Drexler Lynn, Masters o f Contemporary Glass: Selections from the Glick
Collection (Bloomington: Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1997), 12.
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Fig. 30. Untitled (from the Emergence Series), 1982. Dominick Labino (United
States, 1910-1987). Clear glass with dichronic veiling and cased crystalline
iridescence. Gift of Eugene and Marilyn Glick. Inadianapolis Museum of Art.
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286
depth.3 7 In 1988 she began to work with her hometown museum, the Indianapolis
Museum of Art and the curator of decorative arts, Barry Shifman. This effort
culminated in the donation of part o f the collection to the museum. In 1997 the gift
was honored with a catalogue and an exhibition at the Indianapolis museum.3 8 The
accompanying publication was the first permanent collection catalogue to treat
contemporary glass with the rigor regularly applied to historical material. In this way
the Glicks received the highest and most enduring acknowledgment o f their
leadership in glass — a museum exhibition and a dedicated publication. Their
donation marked the second milestone toward the acceptance of studio glass by the
museum world.
As noted, the passion of glass collectors for their medium is unique in the
craft-collecting world. This is clearly seen in the unusual variant of blue chip
collector represented by Gloria and Solomon (Sonny) Kamm of Los Angeles. A
homemaker and lawyer, the Kamms jointly applied their talents to forming a craft
collection with the largest component devoted to studio glass. Additionally, they
became financial backers of the reformulated John Kurland Gallery, Los Angeles, in
the mid-1980s. Renamed the Kurland/Summers Gallery, it was located on upscale
3 7 While all collecting museums desire donations, everyone wants only the best.
Consequently, both parties can be selective. Due to the limited sources o f studio
glass at this time, collections profiles were very similar. This made prestigious
placement possible only if the proffered collection provided works that completed
extant museum holdings or presented significant artists in depth. Consequently,
when donors move toward placing a collection in a museum, they often change the
personal focus of their collections and adopt an institutional perspective in order to
secure the best “placement.”
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287
Melrose Ave, near galleries noted for their paintings and sculptures and the
Pacific Design Center, an interior design shopping mecca. Directed by veteran craft
expert Ruth T. Summers, it was for most of its life the only significant glass gallery
in California.
The Kamms were serious collectors who traveled to as many glass-related
exhibitions and events as possible and made regular visits to glass galleries across
the country. Glass (and other craft objects) were everywhere in their home and
eventually inspired its remodeling in order to better display the growing collection.
Serious about their passion for the medium, they frequently opened their home to
visiting collectors and museum groups and generously hosted events for local
museums. This melding of a passion for a particular medium and the enjoyment of
socializing around it are the hallmarks of the assertive proselytizing that benefited
both the studio glass collectors and the larger glass community. By providing links
between the gallery (marketplace), the museum (validator), and themselves
(collectors), they helped to forge a cohesive studio glass community in Los Angeles.
The Kamms also generously lent many o f their works to local and national
exhibitions. Committed both financially and emotionally to the medium, they
reassessed their collecting goals when the Los Angles Northridge earthquake
destroyed many o f their pieces in 1994. When Ruth Summers retired from running
the gallery in 1993 and the Kamms shifted their collecting focus from glass to
teapots executed in all media. While their collecting has not culminated in a large
3 8 Martha Drexler Lynn, Masters o f Contemporary Glass: Selections from the Glick
Collection (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1997).
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donation to a museum, their work in supporting the Kurland/Summers Gallery
and their constant sharing of their collection, as well and the range of their
collection, make them unique blue chip collectors.
During this period less comprehensive and more modest collections
continued to increase in number. Expressive of the widening audience for glass and
the greater availability of works, these collections contained fewer pieces and
attempted a less encyclopedic range. Typical of these is the Donald and Carol
Wiiken collection of Chicago. Attracted to glass as a visual delight and intrigued by
the technical expertise necessary to form it, the Wiiken’s first collected historic,
factory-made paperweights. Collecting paperweights, unlike the more contemporary
studio glass, centers around knowledge derived from books, as opposed to dealers or
periodicals. Catalogues of American and European production list patterns and styles
by factory with complete identification and dating information.3 9 In this realm, rarity
rules acquisitions.
Eventually, as an extension of their interest in glass, the Wiiken’ began to
attend national craft shows and to study contemporary glass by established studio
glass artists Marvin Lipofsky, Dale Chihuly, and Dick Marquis. As opportunity and
their finances permitted, they added pieces by these artists to their collection. They
also became active in the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass and donated their
time to the organizations activities. In 1989 they displayed part of their collection at
3 9 This is also true for production material made by the Scandinavian factories since
the early twentieth century. With access to these catalogues and some language
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the McLean County Arts Center in Illinois. Sensing that the market was changing
and that they could not sustain their involvement, in 1991 the Wiikens donated a
number of works to the Los Angeles County Museum o f Art. Later that same year,
they donated 10 pieces to the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum, in Neenah, Wisconsin,
which is noted for its paperweight collection.4 0 This arc of introduction through
historical material into contemporary works showed an adventurousness not usually
seen in those who collect historical glass, and it testifies to the compelling nature of
contemporary glass.4 1
Corporate Collections
The number of corporate art collections increased in the 1970s. Amassed as
investments, executive toys, or expressions of corporate identity, they manifest
characteristics of both private and public collections. Governed by a commercial
entity and shaped by either a curator or an enthusiastic corporate executive, these
collections were not subject to a public mandate for education and preservation o f
cultural patrimony. Instead, they embodied personal tastes that were cared for by
professional curators and backed by corporate funds. Often as idiosyncratic as
private collections, they established a pattern of big collecting and ironically set the
facility, a collector could determine how many of each form was made, in what
colors, etc.
4 0 Beverly Copeland, “Glass News Headlines,” Glass Focus 11 (December/January
1998): 1, 14.
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benchmark for pricing when several were auctioned into private or institutional
hands in the 1980s. Those that featured significant glass holdings will be reviewed
here.4 2
One o f the most significant corporate collections o f craft material, including
glass, was the collection assembled at the behest of S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc., of
Racine, Wisconsin. After serving as the basis of the influential Objects: USA
exhibition, approximately one-third of the collection was donated to the American
Craft Museum in New York in 1977. There it formed the core of the museum’s
permanent craft collection.
Corporate collections solely devoted to studio glass were rare 4 3 This was
due in part to the newness of the medium and its unproven bankability. The
collections that did include glass did so to reflect their proximity to glassmaking
centers. Links to its homebase of Seattle, also the home of the world-famous
Pilchuck Glass School spurred the Safeco Insurance Company’s collection. The
Prescott Collection of Pilchuck Glass resulted from the establishment o f “2% for art
4 1 Paul Hollister Jr., a former painter, book editor, and author of The Encyclopedia
o f Glass Paperweights (Santa Cruz, California: Paperweight Press, 1969), also
embraced studio glass after initiation through paperweights.
4 2 Susanne K. Frantz “The Evolution of Studio Glass Collecting and Documentation
in the United States,” in Contemporary Crafts and the Saxe Collection (New York:
Hudson Hills and the Toledo Museum of Art, 1993), 38. Other corporate collections
include the Best Products Co, Inc. of Richmond, Virginia, and John Portman &
Associates, Atlanta, Georgia. Two federal agencies also created collections, the
General Services Administration, Washington D.C., and Washington State Arts
Commission, Olympia, Washington. The White House during Vice-President
Mondale’s tenure also collected craft under the guidance o f Mrs. Mondale.
4 3 It can be argued that The Coming Museum of Glass was originally a corporate
collection that chose to maintain a professional staff o f curators.
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program” adopted by Seattle in return for permission to develop real estate. First
displayed in the public spaces of the Pacific First Centre in 1989, works in this
collection were commissioned and placed on display for total public access. The
Capital Bank of Houston collection also included glass and combined elements of
both private and institutional holdings. As noted in Chapter 4, as some of these were
auctioned off, they solidified the open market prices, and thereby contributed to the
increased commodification o f studio glass.
By and For the Private Collectors of Studio Glass
As glass attracted a larger collector base, support groups that catered
exclusively to collector interests began to develop. These groups sprang up
regionally and nationally. An early manifestation of this trend was seen at the artist-
run Glass Art Society annual conference held in Tucson in 1983. At this event
approximately 20 collectors and dealers, joined by a few glassmakers, discussed
purchasing strategies and display practices as well as their complementary roles
within the field. This event afforded an opportunity to establish a network for the
exchange of information among peers and to focus educational activities aimed at
widening the audience for glass.
The desire of collectors to gather more formally was an incentive for the
nonprofit Creative Glass Center of America at Wheaton Village, Millville, New
Jersey, to initiate its biennial “Glass Lovers Weekend” in 1985 in partnership with
the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass. Proceeds from the event provided
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292
fellowships for glass artists at the center. As noted earlier this later grew into a
conscious effect to court curators, journalists and critics nationally in support of the
medium. The annual weekend sponsored by the Edgewood Orchard Gallery in Fish
Creek, Wisconsin beginning in the early 1980s was a regional collector-focused
activity that attracted several hundred enthusiasts. These events planned by and for
collectors developed connections between collectors and museums in a more
aggressive manner than been witnessed in any of the other craft communities.
By far the most important collector support group was the national Art
Alliance for Contemporary Glass formed in 1987.4 4 With a name carefully modeled
after other groups dedicated to the support of contemporary painting and sculpture,
this group’s ambitious goal was to expand the appreciation of studio glass in both the
general public and the specialized museum world. The Art Alliance held its first
national meeting in September 1989 at the Navy Pier in Chicago at the annual New
Art Forms Exposition, later renamed Sculptural Objects and Functional Arts
(SOFA). To further collector interest, the Alliance created a national “visitation
network” whereby glass collectors could share their collections with traveling
colleagues.45 This network was only for fellow collectors and not generally open to
the non-vetted public.
4 4 Ironically, in later years other attempts were made to create events in conjunction
with G.A.S. at their conference, but it turned out that the basic interests of the artists
and the collectors did not coincide. G.A.S. catered to younger artists, and the
collectors wanted to meet and socialize with established ones.
4 5 See letter from Jean Sosin to members of the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass,
August 19, 1996. The listing of collectors is by zip code and city only, thereby
protecting their privacy.
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Local organizations sprang up as well. The Studio Glass Collectors' Group
was founded in 1980, in part to encourage and support the acquisition of
contemporary glass by the Detroit Institute of Arts. The group promoted exhibitions
and educational programs relating to studio glass. Other urban-based groups with
similar goals formed: the Metropolitan Contemporary Glass Group, founded in 1984,
consisted largely of collectors centered in the New York vicinity; the Contemporary
Glass Group of the Delaware Valley was also founded the same year. In 1987 the
North Shore Studio Art Glass Group, based in suburban Chicago, was formed. All of
these provided conduits for information, camaraderie and enthusiasm to ensure a
growing sense o f community; they also served to generate conversations about the
eventual disposition of studio glass collections. This in turn led to a pattern of
subsequent donations to top-tier and second-tier museums.4 6
4 6 All of this spurred glass collections to enter museums. For example, in 1986 the
Detroit Institute o f Arts received over 60 objects in memory o f David Jacob
Chodorkoff, donated by Drs. Bemie and Joan ChodorkofF in honor of their son. It
joined other historical and contemporary artworks at the museum under the auspices
of then-curator o f decorative arts and design curator Davira Tarrigin. Formed in the
early 1980s, the collection reflects the Chodorkoffs’ background as social
psychologists by featuring figurative works by young artists and multimedia pieces.
They started as the Glicks had done, with their first piece being Harvey K. Littleton’s
Crystal Column (1973). See Ron Glowan, “The David Jacob Chodorkoff Collection,
Detroit Institute o f Art,” Glass Art Society Journal (1993); 127-8. Sheldon and Joan
Barnett also donated 50 pieces of studio glass to the Milwaukee Art Museum,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1990. This gift makes the Milwaukee Art Museum the
most extensive public collection of Littleton’s work. Ben W. Heineman o f Chicago
gave $50,000 to the Coming Museum of Glass in 1998 for the purchase o f
contemporary art. With these donations entering museums, glass gained deeper
acceptance as an art medium.
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From Private Collecting to Public Collecting
To satisfy the ambitions of the private collectors, glass had to enter public
museums. One way to jump-start that process was to actively donate works to select
museums.47 By the mid- and late 1980s, many collectors were selling or giving away
works in an effort to focus and upgrade their holdings (e.g., the Saxes), or to refine
them or bring them into line with institutional practice (e.g., the Glicks). Still others
(e.g., Wiikens), discouraged by the increasing prices and scale of the newest work,
were leaving the field altogether.
Just placing glass in a museum, however, was not enough to accomplish the
intended goals. There were nuances involved in the donation process. Within the
museum world inclusion in the permanent collection (even if not on display) was of
more significance than inclusion in temporary traveling exhibitions. To ensure its
acceptance by the art world, glass had to be represented in the permanent collections
of “first tier” museums.
Curators of public institutions are employed for the benefit of the public and
have distinct duties that can affect potential donations. Curators, both as
connoisseurs and scholars, perform a teaching function, using the art objects in their
4 7 The donation of artwork was made enticing by the tax rules that permitted the
increased value of the work to be deductible from taxable income. Interestingly, the
federal tax code did not distinguish between those works that has already attained
cultural status and those that were still striving. The change in this law did much
damage to the growth o f museum collections through donations and the flow of
artworks decreased.
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collections as tools of instruction.4 8 Through exhibitions and related catalogues,
brochures, and scholarly writings, their knowledge potentially provides a framework
for presenting the material in a coherent manner, often guided by fresh
interpretations and insights. Thus curators are required to embrace knowledge that is
broadly historical and more culturally attuned than that necessarily required by
dealers or individual collectors. Curators also are charged with creating permanent
collections that reflect the focus of their institutions. If the institution is a glass
museum, as in the case of The Coming Museum of Glass, then only material related
to glass is appropriate. If a proffered collection does not afford an opportunity to
realize some aspect of an institution-related goal, it may be turned down. Unlike
private collectors, the only method that curators have to increase the cultural capital
of their collections (and their status within the museum world) is to produce articles
and exhibition catalogues that feature their holdings and propound new theories.
Through valorizing their collections, they accrue an enhanced reputation, as opposed
to the financial profit that dealers or collectors stand to gain.
Institutions have little or no money set aside for the purchase of artworks,
consequently they rely on donations. This necessity establishes a dynamic three-way
relationship between the curator, the donor, and the dealers. The curator acquires
works to build the collection; the donor gives works to the museum thereby
increasing their cultural capital and the value of the works themselves, in addition to
4 8 Curators are also technically responsible for the safe storage of the artworks under
their care. More conceptual and managerial than actual, this involves working in
tandem with other museum staff who transport, install, and conserve the works.
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netting a modest tax deduction. The dealers sell the works to the collector, make a
profit and gain exposure for themselves and their stable o f artists. Within this system,
artworks flow in one direction: toward the public domain and a resting place w ithin
museums. The way in which studio glass was incorporated in this “flow” will be
discussed below.
Most museums operate under a masterpiece-centered
conceptualization o f art, and as Robson notes “[mjuseums are represented as
disinterested accumulators of only the very ‘best’ quality, making their decisions
objectively and not intuitively, as might the private collector.”4 9 While the private
collector can regularly indulge personal taste, the public collector needs to
understand his or her personal prejudices and to collect without showing them. This
presumed difference reflects an assumption that institutional collections are
necessarily intellectual statements and broad in their scope; but, in fact, they are
often ruled by practicality, personal taste, institutional politics and vagaries of
personality. It was these more pragmatic elements that proved to be fortunate for
glass.
For the purposes of this analysis, the museums that are key to the growth of
glass acceptance will be separated into two groups. While acknowledging that any
classificatory system simplifies attributes, this division will better permit the nature
of the contributions made by these distinct institutional entities to be examined. For
the purposes of this study, “first-tier” museums will be defined as large, urban-based,
4 9 A. Deirdre Robson, Prestige, Profit, and Pleasure: The Market fo r Modem Art in
New York in the 1940s and 1950s (New York: Garland Publishers, 1995), 17.
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universal survey museums (termed “encyclopedic” within the field). Also within
this category are those smaller institutions that are recognized as undisputed leaders
in the field o f glass. Therefore, the Metropolitan Museum o f Art, the Museum of
Modem Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art are classified as first-tier
museums, as are The Coming Museum of Glass and the Toledo Museum o f Art by
virtue of their sustained connections to the glass community.5 0 Second-tier
museums, on the other hand, are often regional in the scope o f their collecting,
located outside o f urban centers, and have fewer works in their collections and fewer
staff members. While it might appear that validation from first-tier museums would
be the only recognition beneficial to the cause of studio glass, this was not true, for
important validation came from the second-tier institutions as well.
The relative importance of these institutions and their contributions to the
acceptance o f glass is governed by how each one functions within the overall art
5 0 In 1995 the Metropolitan Museum o f Art (founded in 1870) had a staff o f 1,654
full-time employees and a part-time staff o f 791. They have a 250,000 volume
library and their attendance was 4,400,000. The Museum o f Modem Art was
founded in 1929 and has a full-time staff o f 500 and no paid part-time personnel.
They have a 100,000 volume library and annual attendance o f 1,300,000. The Los
Angeles County Museum of Art was founded in 1910 and had a curatorial staff of
40. The library boasts 117,000 volumes. Museum attendance in 1995 was over one
million. The Coming Museum was founded in 1951 and in 1995 it had a full-time
staff of 31 and a part-time staff of 4. The library has 50,000 volumes and attendance
in 1995 was 362,558. The Toledo Museum o f Art was founded in 1901 and has a
full-time staff o f 90 and part-time staff of 140. The library has 50,000 and attendance
was 275,779 in 1995. See R. R. Bowker, The Official Museum Directory, 1995 (New
Jersey: Reed Elsevier Inc., 1995).
Another way of defining the first tier is to examine overall budgets, but as
this is not a business study, the definitions are framed instead by the material
collected, the number of staff and attendance, and the strength o f their libraries.
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system. First-tier museums must contend with greater public scrutiny, as their
actions and inactions are widely observed and commented upon. Given the
essentially conservative nature of museums, such visibility can adversely affect the
selection of exhibitions and acquisitions they pursue or their willingness to open new
areas of collecting. In a high-profile institution each curatorial selection is an
opportunity for public comment and can unduly affect the market. For example, if
the Metropolitan Museum of Art were to announce that it were going to aggressively
collect studio glass, it would send a signal to the private collecting world and the
dealer community that glass is a desirable art commodity. This would place the
museum in the position of making judgments that affect dollar valuations before
these have been determined by the market. As a rule, museums that are not
specifically dedicated to contemporary art wait until contemporaneous material has a
track record and has received validation from dealers and collectors.
Perceptual blinkers affect first-tier museums, too. In a candid lecture
delivered at the annual conference of the Glass Art Society, held at Coming, New
York, in 1991 curator R. Craig Miller commented on the lack o f penetration of
glass into the collections of universal art museums, stating that
[f]or a number of reasons none of them simple, few of the really
large, encyclopedic museums have been willing to make a
long-term commitment [to glass]. First, the basic organizational structure of
such large institutions works against it. Departments
are most often divided by subject matter and media: painting and sculpture
are in one department, decorative arts in another. When
I was at the Metropolitan Museum, Picasso's ceramic plaques
were catalogued in the design collection; they were two dimensional surfaces
just like a painting, but Picasso had not executed these particular heads on
canvas. Likewise, sculptural pieces by [glass artists] Stanislav Libensky and
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Dale Chihuly were considered decorative arts since they were made of
glass.5 1
While these considerations are quirky and not based on any theoretically defensible
logic, museums are not necessarily known for their seamless reasoning; and
consequently, such barriers to the understanding and appreciating of studio glass are
frequently found. Miller further notes that for those who did not gravitate to glass,
“the most serious obstacle, however, is the obvious one: compared to other craft
media, many museum staffs simply did not understand this new work. They don’t
like it visually and they sure as hell aren’t going to spend any money on it.”5 2 So,
when a curator of sufficient power within a first-tier institution chooses to add glass
to the collections, it is an important statement that expresses a personal interest in the
medium. Because of this, the story of when and under whose aegis glass entered
leading collections is, in reality, the story of curatorial discretion, not universal
institutional acceptance.
Second-tier museums, on the other hand, have greater flexibility, as they
operate with less public scrutiny. While joining a second-tier collection may not
gamer worldwide acceptance, it can give increased exposure that will in turn allow a
wider audience to develop. Indeed, exhibitions and acquisitions undertaken by
regional or smaller museums often demonstrate the potential of glass and permit
5 1 The term universal art museum is used in British literature and academic writing;
the term encyclopedic is used within the museum world. They both refer to museums
that collect a broad range of materials over many cultures and timeframes. R. Craig
Miller, “Betwixt and Between: Contemporary Glass in American Art Museums,”
Glass Art Society Journal (1991): 29.
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first-tier museums’ personnel to see it afresh. Second-tier museums, however,
have less clout and fewer economic resources, which can impact the level o f
scholarship they can sponsor, their ability to offer enticing status to prospective
donors, and their ability to attract large grants from funding agencies. For a “new”
medium such as studio glass, incomplete scholarship and accessioning of less-than-
blue-chip collections can be detrimental to the overall perception o f the movement.
For these reasons, it took the actions and interactions of both types o f museums to
propel the increased acceptance of glass.5 3
Several key acquisitions of studio glass by first tier museums occurred in the
first years of the new movement and helped to create momentum. This was due in
5 2 R. Craig Miller, “Betwixt and Between: Contemporary Glass in American Art
Museums,” Glass Art Society Journal (1991): 29.
5 3 The literature about museums, their influence, and the nature o f their constructed
presentations is vast and will only be referred to here as it directly relates to the
display or acquisition of American studio glass. For further reading on the general
topic see Rosalind Krauss, “The Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalistic Museum,”
Art History 54, (December 1980): 3-17; Carol Duncan, Civilizing Rituals: Inside the
Public Art Museums (London: Routledge, 1995); Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums
and the Shaping o f Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1993); Susan M. Peace,
Museum, Objects, and Collections: A Cultural Study (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution press, 1993), Didier Maleuvre, Museum Memories: History, Technology,
Art (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1999) and Daniel J. Sherman
and Irit Rogoff, eds. Museum Culture: Histories, Discourse, Spectacles
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). For a history o f American
museums and their influence, see Steven Conn Museums and American Intellectual
Life, 1876-1926 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), Tamar Katriel,
“No Two Alike: The Aesthetic of Collecting” (Ph.D. diss., University of Haifa and
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1987). For a discussion of the meaning of
collections in terms of the completion of self, see Grant McCracken, Culture and
Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character o f Consumer Goods and
Activities (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988), esp. “The
Evocative Power of Things: Consumer Goods and the Preservation o f Hopes and
Ideals,” 104-17.
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part to increased interest in what the high art world called “new media” and in
part because o f curatorial discretion.5 4 The movement o f studio glass into large
urban-based, encyclopedic museums began when the Metropolitan Museum of Art
added studio glass to its permanent holdings during the mid-1960s and late 1970s.
Henry Geidzahler, then curator o f contemporary art saw a piece from the Navajo
Blanket Cylinders Series (1976) by Dale Chihuly and promptly purchased it for the
collection. The next year he accessioned Amber Crested Form (1977) by Harvey
Littleton.
The significance of these acquisitions rests on two points, first that the works
entered the museum early and second, that they were brought in under the aegis of
the contemporary art department not the American decorative arts department, where
glass by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Frank Lloyd Wright already formed part of the
collection. Given the hierarchy among museum departments, being acquired by a
department linked to painting and sculpture was a boom to studio glass, for while the
department that accessioned the work is not mentioned on the label copy or any
other public notice, it is known within the art and museum world.5 5 Writing in 1990
54 Glass hardly qualifies as a new medium as it has been used as a luxury goods and
an art medium since Egyptian times. Its inclusion in that category illustrates how
little the twentieth-century high or fine arts world and perhaps some of the
contemporary curators knew about its history. This misconception led to anomalies
such as when the first-tier Art Institute of Chicago in 1963 mounted an exhibition of
glass by Harvey Littleton. Sadly, they did not continue their support of the medium.
55 It is difficult for the casual observer to decipher which department acquisitioned a
specific artwork. If a museum gallery is exclusively controlled by one department, a
guess can be made. But even that can be misleading, for example items brought into
the Los Angeles County Museum of Art by the decorative arts department were often
displayed in the Anderson Building, which was largely controlled by the twentieth-
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Geidzahler justified his acquisitions by linking them to historical works already in
the (decorative arts) collections, stating “I think that it is possible to compare what
Dale Chihuly is doing with what Louis Comfort Tiffany did I believe his best
glass rivals what Tiffany did a hundred years ago.” Geidzahler also saw a similarity
between the visual impact of studio glass and the American “ great traditions of
watercoior and color field painting.”5 6 By shifting the association of glass from
decorative arts to painting, he provided a more secure validation than the misplaced
contemporaneous rage for “new media” would have.
In the early 1980s Penelope Hunter-Stiebel of the decorative arts department
took over championing studio glass at the Met. Deploying a time-honored curatorial
gambit, she secured gifts from artists and donors instead o f finding money to buy
them.5 7 She actively exhibited glass, too. In 1979 she installed Coming’s New
century department. The Museum of Modem Art design department acquired objects
by Sydney Cash, Dale Chihuly, Harvey Littleton, Tom Patti, and Toots Zynsky into
their design department. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney
Museum o f American Art in New York, as well as the Philadelphia Museum o f Art,
added a limited number of pieces to their collections through a variety of
departments. Because of the concern about the suitability of glass as an art medium,
curators have resorted to ruses to acquire controversial works. Items donated at year-
end, with the deadline of December 31st, avoid scrutiny by both other curators and
the board o f directors. Also items that are under a certain dollar amount can join
collections without review.
5 6 Henry Geidzahler, Making it New: Essays, Interviews, and Talks (San Diego:
Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994), 321.
57 There is very little money for acquisitions in museums. The usual method of
buying works of art for a collection is to find donors who are willing to purchase the
workand then donate it. In this system, selections are usually made by the collector
and accepted by the curator. This places the donor on a par with the curator in the
sculpting o f the collection and can lead to conflicts. To avoid this, curators who work
with living artists can ask the artist directly for donations. This is also problematic as
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Glass: A Worldwide Survey a traveling exhibition, giving significant validation
and exposure to the medium. The cachet of the Met as a venue for New Glass most
likely influenced the decision of the contemporary art periodical ArtNews to publish
an article on studio glass by Hunter-Stiebel in 1981. An early, cogent recounting of
the development o f American studio glass, the essay was widely read and profiled
several prominent studio glassmakers.
The Met’s interest in studio glass once again shifted when decorative arts
curator R. Craig Miller took over from 1983 until 1990. He describes his
involvement in the early years as limited to “industrial and decorative design and
only in the late 1980s were craft acquisitions allowed to resume.”5 9 Miller links the
this places the curator and the museum in the business of potentially influencing the
market and swaying collecting patterns. Museums are generally organized to
acknowledge success already confirmed by the marketplace and the collector
community. Interestingly, The Coming Museum of Glass has received the majority
of its twentieth-century glass as gifts from the artists. Museum policy on this point
varies with each board o f directors and institution. For a discussion of the relative
influence o f curators see Michael Brenson, “The Curator’s Moment,” Art Journal 57,
No. 4 (Winter, 1998): 16-27. Curators are perceived as being more powerful than
they are. Indeed their power is more evident outside of their institutions than within
for within their institutions, they cannot always place what they would like on
display because of internal curatorial turf battles.
58 Penelope Hunter-Stiebel, “Contemporary Art Glass: An Old Medium Gets a New
Look,” ArtNews 80, No. 6 (Summer 1981): 130. Studio glass was not again featured
until 1996 when Jane Aldin working with Stewart Johnson installed 39 pieces of
studio glass for an exhibition that ran from April 8 to October 6, 1996. This
exhibition focused on conceptual works that were not vessel related. See review of
"Craftsman Hand: Multifaceted Glass: A Metropolitan Museum exhibition signals
the coming of age of the studio glass movement,” House Beautiful, (April, 1996): 44
and passim.
5 9 R. Craig Miller, “Betwixt and Between: Contemporary Glass in American Art
Museums.” Glass Art Society Journal (1991): 30.
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lack o f interest in studio glass to a “modernist mandate” that had excluded the
medium from consideration. He remembers that
[t]he Metropolitan Museum ... had been a major advocate for decorative
design during the decades between the World Wars, but by 1940 it largely
abandoned the field for the next quarter century. The Modernist mandate
became so pervasive, in fact, that it led to the myth at that time that only
functional objects that were industrially made had any real aesthetic value.
Both manufacturers and the public looked to architects and industrial
designers - not craftsmen - for their best products. If craft was not a “dirty
word,” it was at least something not to be taken very seriously.6 0
As studio glass lost its strict association with craft, however, the Met acquired works
by Howard Ben Tre, William Carlson, Dale Chihuly, Dan Dailey, Michael Glancy,
David Huchthausen, Joel Philip Myers, Narcissus Quagliata, and Steven Weinberg
for its permanent collection.
The other leading New York institution to impact the acceptance o f studio
glass was the Museum of Modem Art. Its tepid interest during the period 1975 to
1990 was manifest in two small shows drawn from its collections: Crafts from the
Collection (1986-87), featuring 24 objects, and Glass from the Collection (1990),
which presented a mixture of styles collected by the department of architecture and
design since 1934. As noted in Chapter 3, the museum favored glass that was
industrial in nature, not “craft” or “art” made from craft materials. Even with this
low level of interest it acquired objects by Sydney Cash, Dale Chihuly, Harvey
Littleton, Tom Patti, and Toots Zynsky.
“ R. Craig Miller, “Betwixt and Between: Contemporary Glass in American Art
Museums,” Glass Art Society Journal, (1991): 28.
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As noted previously, glass also benefited from the encouragement of two
significant, public collections with unique connections to glass: The Coming
Museum of Glass and the Toledo Museum of Art. Both institutions took advantage
o f their ties to industrial glass to expand into support of contemporary glass through
aggressive exhibition programs during the 1970s. The Toledo Museum of Art’s
activities tapered off during the 1980s, however, and would only be rekindled in the
1990s with the Saxe donation.
The Coming Museum of Glass, by contrast, displayed sustained support. In
1977 it began its annual, juried, international pictorial record o f works entitled
Contemporary Glass which recognized the important to glass as an art medium and
framed it within an international context. In 1980 when the name of this event was
changed to New Glass Review and the format shifted to a printed volume, it evolved
into a valuable record o f works made during the previous calendar year. Coming also
actively collected studio glass, through both donations (from artists or collectors) and
purchases. Their publication in 1989 o f the seminal Contemporary Glass: A World
Survey from the Coming Museum o f Glass by Susanne K. Frantz provided
scholarship and a ready visual access to the collection. Coming’s support was also
expressed through the simple act of placing photographs of works by Dominick
Labino and others notable studio glass artists in slide packs offered in the bookstore,
which encouraged exposure to and appreciation for contemporary glass. Meanwhile,
second-tier museums committed to glass in a more consistent manner and without
resorting to the manipulation of terminology. With a smaller public located outside
of urban centers, curators could feature works and artists not deemed acceptable in
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New York.6 1 One regional museum that demonstrated commitment to glass was
the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin.6 2 In 1978, 1981,
and 1984 they mounted a series of juried triennials entitled Americans in Glass,
which sought to provide an overview of the work o f studio glassmakers. Organized
by David Huchthausen, these traveled across the United States and to Europe. In the
catalogue essay for Americans in Glass (1984), David Huchthausen called for
serious evaluation of glass art and criticized the artistic state o f the medium, stating
that “one conclusion is inescapable: contemporary glass is not necessarily bad art as
much as it is insignificant art.”6 3 By the exhibition of 1984 Huchthausen's and the
other jurors' statements revealed further frustration and disappointment, as they
6 1 See Diane Crane, “Art Museums and the Reception of the Avant-garde Styles,”
The Transformation o f the Avant-Garde: The New York Art World, 1940-1985
(Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1987), 119-36. Crane notes that just as with
studio glass, the acquisition patterns of high art in New York museums versus those
seen in regional areas are markedly different.
6 2 Founded in 1973, the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum had an annual
estimated attendance o f45,000 in 1995 with a staff of seven full-time and seven part-
time employees. Its areas o f collecting include paintings and sculpture depicting the
natural world, glass, and porcelain. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the collection
seen at the Toledo Museum and the Coming Museum were being emulated by a
growing number of museums the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia;
Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design, New York; The Detroit Institute o f
Arts; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Huntington Galleries, Huntington, West
Virginia; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art
Museum, Wausau, Wisconsin; National Museum o f American History and the
Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian institution,
Washington, D.C.; Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; and
the Wheaton Museum of Glass, Millville, New Jersey. As with most studio crafts,
most glass is accessioned within decorative arts or design departments, not the
departments that deal with painting and sculpture.
6 3 See Wausau, Wisconsin, The Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Americans in
Glass (Wausau, 1981); 9.
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307
expressed the questionable validity of exhibitions based solely on a commonly
shared material.6 4 Although the 1984 Americans in Glass show would travel in
Europe until 1986, it would be the last o f the series. Huchthausen’s comments were
prophetically out of step with the collegial tone of most writing about glass at the
time. The Woodson’s support o f him and its aggressive collecting strategy placed it
in the vanguard.
The Huntington Museum o f Art, Huntington, West Virginia also contributed
to the exposure of glass by sponsoring almost a dozen Invitational Exhibitions after
1976.6 5 Initially it approached the medium in a survey format that featured 135
objects by four dozen artists. In 1978, it shifted to focused exhibitions featuring the
work of two to four artists in depth as in the New American Glass: Focus West
Virginia (1984). The New American Glass: Focus 2 West Virginia (1986) catalogue
featured color photographs and a brief history, again concentrating on technique, as
opposed to critical assessment. As an afterthought an interleafed critique was added
6 4 See Wausau, Wisconsin, The Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Americans in
Glass (Wausau, 1984): 9; and Wausau, Wisconsin, The Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art
Museum, Americans in Glass (Wausau, 1981), 7-11.
6 5 The Huntington Museum of Art was founded in 1947 and had an attendance of
60,000 and a full-time staff of eighteen and part-time staff o f six, with a 10,000
volume library in 1995 and collections o f nineteenth- and twentieth-century glass in
addition to Georgian silver, nineteenth- and twentieth-century painting and sculpture,
American and European graphics, pre-Columbian ceramics, and American
decorative arts.
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308
by Paul Hollister.6 6 As further evidence of its commitment the Huntington, too,
accessioned a broad selection of studio glass for its permanent collection.
Failures of leadership in acknowledging studio glass must be noted. The
American Craft Museum, the preeminent craft museum in the county with its
prominent location in New York City, would seem a natural champion for studio
glass.6 7 From its founding in 1956 until 1991, however, the museum mounted only
three dozen exhibitions including contemporary glass, with only 16 devoted
exclusively to the medium.6 8 As one of the first institutions to recognize the studio
glass movement in the early 1960s and to see that American studio glass should
appropriately be linked to the larger international glass movement, this is a
disappointing record. A modest attempt was made in 1974 when the museum (then
named the Museum of Contemporary Crafts) provided a look at six private
collections in its The Collector exhibition. Here, glass was represented by Sy and
6 6 See Paul Hollister, New American Glass: Focus 2 West Virginia, June 15 to
November 9, 1986, Huntington Galleries, West Virginia, 1986, and New American
Glass: Focus West Virginia, October 21 to November 25, 1984, Huntington
Galleries, Huntington West Virginia, 1984.
6 7 Founded in 1956, the American Craft Museum has a fluctuating number of staff
members. The library has 30,000 volumes and its annual attendance is about
100,000.
6 8 In contrast the 1980s saw many small and large museums mounting exhibitions
giving an overview of contemporary glass. In 1981 the DeCordova Museum and
Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts, surveyed glass created in New England in
Glass Routes. Anniversaries, especially of the Toledo Workshops, provided
convenient reasons for many shows, including the twenty-year celebration American
Glass Art: Evolution and Revolution at The Morris Museum, Morristown, New
Jersey, in 1982. See Sharon K. Emanuelli, “Chronology: American Craft,1851-
1986,” in Craft Today: Poetry o f the Physical (New York: American Craft Museum
and Weidenfeid and Nicolson: 1986) 279-89.
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309
Theo Portnoy of Scarsdale, New York, who had begun collecting (and then
selling) glass after seeing Objects: USA. Later in 1977 the museum restructured its
Young Americans show into three separate exhibitions organized by medium. They
invited Dale Chihuly to serve as a juror for the reconstituted Young Americans: Clay
/ Glass, which opened in 1978 with 25 glassmakers and 67 clay artists. Sadly, as
with other craft organizations, their catalogues usually consisted of general
introductory essays, numerous photographs, obligatory biographies, and exhibition
checklists, only rarely including scholarly or critical essays.
Even with these activities, Craig Miller notes that “the museum had begun in
many ways to follow the movement rather than carefully examining and assessing it.
Indeed, perhaps more than any American institution, the [American Craft Museum]
has helped to perpetrate ...[an] aesthetic and intellectual vacuum in the field.”6 9
Perhaps to avoid offending the artists who once were the core of its membership, the
museum produced survey exhibitions selected by living artists rather than by staff
who could exercise curatorial discrimination. It did not try to place glass within a
larger historical or artistic context until the mid-1990s when it attempted to write a
history of craft.7 0 Ironically, the museum that first recognized the glass movement
6 9 R. Craig Miller, “Betwixt and Between: Contemporary Glass in American Art
Museums,” Glass Art Society Journal (1991): 31.
7 0 in 1994 the American Craft Museum published a history of craft that cast its net so
wide as to include industrial design and folk art. Perhaps driven by a rising interest in
the work of post- World War II production designers and the increasing
respectability of folk art, the museum strove to be inclusive, and as a result obscured
its craft roots. The authors selected, chosen from outside the craft field, evidenced
little understanding o f the history o f traditional and contemporary crafts. The
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310
does not have a representative glass collection of its own. As o f May 1991, after
thirty years of recognizing studio glass, the museum had only seventy-two glass
objects in its holdings, and 31 of them were Christmas tree ornaments.7 1
Other second-tier museums sporadically honored studio glass and impacted it
acceptance. In 1983 the Tucson Museum o f Art presented Sculptural Glass curated
by Susanne Frantz. It was the first of several exhibitions o f large-scale, site-specific
sculptures. Cast Glass Sculpture, displayed at the Art Gallery, California State
University, Fullerton (1986), also focused on large-scale, sculptural cast-glass works.
The catalogue was notable for its essay by the art critic Donald Kuspit, who applied
an “outsider's” eye to the work and an intellectual framework from which to view the
material. Moving away from references to the decorative arts and the table-sized
scale of previous works, this exhibition heralded the potential o f glass as a serious
sculptural medium.7 2 A similar approach was taken by the 1990 Renwick Gallery's
reception o f these books (four were planned) was disappointing, and the final one
was never produced. Janet Kardon, the director of the museum during this period and
onetime curator of the ill-fated Robert Mapplethope photography exhibition, had
unsuccessfully tried to reinvent high crafts by removing its tainted craft associations.
See Janet Kardon, The History o f Twentieth-Century American C raft: Centenary
Project at American Craft Museum, New York City 1995 to 1997.
7 1 See R. Craig Miller, “Betwixt and Between: Contemporary Glass in American Art
Museums,” Glass Art Society Journal C l 991): 31.
7 2 Paul Hollister, “New American Glass: Focus West Virginia,” June 15-November 9,
1986, Glass Art Society Journal (1986): 114-16. Glass Artist Joel Philip Myers noted
the same situation in a review. A look at the picture o f the exhibition reveals a
vessel-based form vocabulary with only two pieces pictured presenting a
“sculptural” sensibility. See Joel Philip Myers, “New American Glass,” Craft
Horizons (August 1976), 36, No. 4 :36-41. Reconnection between the factory and the
artist was also initiated when the southeastern United States hosted New American
Glass: Focus West Virginia at the Huntington Galleries (later the Huntington
Museum o f Art), Huntington, West Virginia (1976). H alf of the exhibition was
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311
Glassworks (1990), which featured constructions in the galleries to which the
public was invited to watch the process.7 3
One hallmark of maturity for a movement is the presenting of a single-artist
retrospective. This style o f exhibition assumes that an artist produced an oeuvre
warranting examination in detail, has sufficient gravitas, and created a large enough
number of works to warrant attention. Here second tier museums lead first-tier. Dale
Chihuly: A Decade o f Glass was a ten-year retrospective organized in 1984 by the
Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, Washington. In 1985 the High Museum of Art,
Atlanta, originated Harvey Littleton: A Retrospective Exhibition, and in 1987 Dan
Dailey: Simple Complexities in Drawings, and Glass 1972-1987 was produced by
the Philadelphia Colleges o f the Arts. In 1989 The Phillips Collection, Washington,
D.C., circulated Howard Ben Tre : Contemporary Sculpture.
By the end of 1990 the collectors of studio glass had matured into a powerful
force for the advancement of glass. Through their sophisticated and focused
activities glass became a modest presence at both first- and second-tier museums and
was fortuitously displayed along side “high” art. In a telling example, selections
from the approximately 20 pieces donated by Susan Steinhauser and Daniel
devoted to studio glass, including a national invitational with 51 glassmakers and a
second section of earlier pieces produced in collaborations between six glass artists
and six West Virginia glass factories.
7 3 The Renwick Gallery, as part of the Smithsonian Institute and under the
jurisdiction of the National Museum of American Art was little more that a
kunsthalle, although its location in the national capital positioned it to be a important
venue. Its collection of studio glass only includes work by fourteen artists, as o f July
1990.
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312
Greenberg were installed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1990.
Although not assigned prime gallery space in the newly opened Anderson Building,
glass was permitted into a small sunlit space adjacent to the collection o f
contemporary paintings and sculptures on the second floor. As the works were being
installed with custom-designed cases and lighting, a senior curator remarked that the
only reason they were allowed into the gallery was because contemporary paintings
were too large to fit into the petite space and that glass could more readily withstand
the strong sunlight that flooded the space. While museums maintain the role of the
cultural validator, the level of their actual participation often rests on mundane
realities of the scale of the artwork and the design of the building.
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Part n, Chapter 6: Boundaries Challenged : Glass Art
313
It would be wrong to think o f the past 50 years of American studio glass as
anything more than a small event when set against the previous five thousand years
of glass history. Placed alongside of the glass output of the Roman period, for
example, the corpus of American studio glass is insignificant. During its brief span,
however, it has made remarkable strides for itself and by extension the other craft-
based media, for it has successfully challenged what is accepted as art and what is
relegated to the category of craft. This accomplishment is manifested in the
flourishing marketplace and collecting communities.
The restraints were many with the first being the materiality of glass. Art critic
and glassmaker John Perreault writes that glass is “the most purely visual of all the
art media, even more visual than painting, because in it light, color and material are
one,” glass is “primarily visual because it is not very complex to the touch. Glass is
cool, smooth and unusually slippery. ”* This visual appeal, while good for attracting
collectors, made the medium suspect to the realm of high art that it sought to enter.
The second boundary that needed to be challenged related to the location
where glass items were produced. To be considered high art, glass had to leave the
factory and locate its production in a setting that paralleled that adopted by painters
and sculptors. When glass successfully moved from the factory to the studio — a
move accomplished by means of rediscovered technology and the invention o f clever
1 John Perreault, “Conversation” Glass 64 (Fall 1996): 13.
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314
new technology by such leaders a Dominick Labino— this telling distinction was
erased. Artists working in glass eventually adopted high art practices of production.
The third boundary involved breaking into the educational system of the high
art world. After a brief period o f identifying itself as a discrete field, studio glass had
attracted enough practitioners to position itself within universities as a credible art
medium, one worthy of focused study. This was accomplished through the activities
o f the proto-studio glassmakers in the 1950s and 1960s and later by Harvey Littleton
and his followers, who helped to move potters from clay to glass and glass from
vessel-oriented forms to sculptural one. The final and decisive step was to place
glass in the university art curriculum.2
These accomplishments by the American studio glass community did not
occur in a vacuum. There were societal developments that drove the field. Anti
establishment sensibilities, the increased acceptance of art made in nontraditional
mediums, the lure o f a life outside of the mainstream and group camaraderie all
contributed to the formation of a community that was devoted to the making of art in
glass. Soon collectors appeared, and a limited literature relating to the field also
emerged. Next museums added their clout, mounting exhibitions that included glass
artworks. Some museums even began to collect glass: The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in addition to regional or medium-
specific institutions such as the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of
Art, and The Coming Museum o f Glass. With high art institutions joining their
2 Paul Hollister, “American Studio Glass in the Next Decade: 1987-1997, Neues Glas
1 (1987): 6-13.
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315
second tier confreres, glass was able to successfully challenge established
institutional boundaries.
Also contributing to this overall growth was the development of a private
collecting community and the market apparatus to supply it. This occurred in the
straight-line trajectory seen in other craft-based media with the distinction that in
glass it occurred more rapidly. Only when the development of a secondary market
was the next logical step in this process did the growth momentum fail. This most
public aspect of the art market was not inclined to confer value on contemporary
works made in a craft-linked medium. This aspect of acceptance and
commodification o f American studio glass has yet to solidify.
Issues of content also played a role in the history and expansion of studio
glass. Artist Michael Taylor defined two types o f studio glass artists: those who work
within the “modernist concepts of sculptural form as personal statement” and those
“who love the material because of its raw beauty and enjoy making things with hot
glass because it is challenging.”3 Thus, there exist parallel universes: one inhabited
by content-driven makers, and the one by those who are solely engaged by the
materiality of glass. The tension between those who make content-driven glass and
those who reify the beauty of the material remains a central concern. On the one
hand artists declare “technique is cheap,” on the other they need craft for successful
art creation; this issue continues to be replayed as each artist works to gain technical
3 Michael Taylor, “Regional Glass Artists and Studios o f Northwest New York
State,” Glass Art Society Journal (1991): 82.
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316
proficiency in order to express content more effectively. Works that do not strive
for content hinder the acceptance o f glass as an appropriate medium for artmaking.
This aspect is further complicated by the imposition o f high-art-world
standards by the high art world for glass that require it to conform to the norms of
painting and sculpture. The issue o f whether glass can be good sculpture - similar to
works made by those working in wood, metal stone, or assembled materials — is
incorrectly framed; the real issue should be can glass function as an expressive art
medium. As shown, the answer is “yes,” with varying levels of success, as would be
true for any art media.
The final challenge that still troubles studio glass, is its place relative to the
high art firmament. Art historian Thomas Crow has noted that in Europe prior to the
mid-seventeenth century, “art” was defined differently the way we characterize it
now. Painting, sculpture, furniture, glass, etc., were made by artisans who belonged
to guilds. In 1648 a dramatic transition began with the establishment o f the Royal
Academy of Painting and Sculpture by French painter Charles Le Brun. This created
a new category for the fine arts. These new “fine artists” no longer wished to be part
o f the guilds. Separate exhibitions were established, lectures about theory
proliferated, classes featured live models, and periodic salons for the general public
appeared. These conscious steps were taken to remove the stigma of being
considered “artisans who worked with their hands” instead of artists who dealt in
concepts. Instead the new “fine artists” sought to become part of literary and
philosophical circles and to remove themselves from the artisanal world by
formulating an intellectual basis for their work. As shown similar activities were
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317
attempted by the American studio glassmakers with the notable exception of
formulating an intellectual basis for their work.4 It is in this respect that studio glass
has yet to achieve its vaunted goal of being high art. This lack will continue to haunt
its success and acceptance. Without an appropriate set o f critical tools for assessing
the validity o f art made out of glass, American studio glass will be unable to cross
the boundary into the world of high art.
4 Other guild artisans of the period followed this model. Architects established formal
schools o f architecture, which separated them from other designers. Public art
museums further accelerated the divisions within the art world. Galleries were, by
definition, confined to painting and sculpture. Museums, on the other hand, were to
collect the whole range of the arts. Even within the latter, though, separate
departments were eventually created for the fine and applied arts. Even in museums
devoted exclusively to the decorative arts, separate departments were established for
different media, following the model o f the Victoria & Albert Museum. Thomas E.
Crow, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1985).
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318
GLOSSARY OF TERMS RELATING TO AMERICAN STUDIO GLASS
ANNEALING OVEN: An auxiliary oven used for the slow cooling of glass after it
has been formed. Without proper cooling the glass will experience stresses and often
will shatter when it is completely cool. One of the key inventions of the 1960s was
the double fold annealing oven door by Dominick Labino. This permitted the door to
be partially open or closed in a small space.
BATCH GLASS: A mixture of raw materials (typically silica, soda or potash and
lime) that is heated in a pot to form glass. At the 1962 Toledo Workshops the first
batch they had did not handle well. They substituted #475 Fiberglass pellets.
BATTULO: NOTE SPELLING Developed by Venini, the term literally means
beaten glass. Used a decorative device, the surface of the form is satin wheel ground,
producing irregular and adjacent markings.
CAGE CUP: vasum diatretum: is a form of ovoid beaker with no foot. Comprised of
two layers of glass the exterior layer is carved away in filigree pattern while still
attached to the supporting layer with stmts. They are rare and have sparked
controversy as to how they were constructed. The Coming Museum of Glass has an
example. Both it and its challenging technique is known to all studio glass artists
CASED GLASS: The application of a thin layer of glass over a contrasting layer of
glass. This type of decorative device was used in the early years of the studio glass
movement because it was easy to execute.
CIRE PERDUE: see lost wax. Frederick Carder’s method involved 8 steps.
CULLET: Cullet is raw glass, often broken from a cooled melt that is remelted, with
fresh ingredients, to form objects. Although it melts faster that fresh glass, cullet can
imply an inferior scrape glass. In the 1950 articles about glass forming urged that re
melted glass be used. Unfortunately this type of glass has impurities that can cause
incorrect annealing and other flaws.
DICHRONIC VEILING: Dichronic glass has been coated to reflect colors not
usually evident under ordinary lighting conditions. Optical qualities have often
proven to be the refuge of the less skilled glass artists.
FERRO: Ferro refers to a piece of steel that is coated with clay. It is used as a plate
under murrines when they are fused.
FILET DE VERRE: A term invented by American studio glass artist Toots Zynzky
to denote her method of forming vessels out of fused filaments of glass.
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319
FLAMEWORKING: Flame or lampwork work uses pre-formed, glass tubes or rods
of fusible glass that are heated section by section over a small flame. The heat
softens the glass and allows it to be shaped or attached to other glass tubes.
Originally the work was done over a fire flame, later a Bunsen burner was
employed. The technique was probably invented in the Roman era, and achieved
popularity in the seventeenth-century for making small figures and glass beads. In
the twentieth century it devolved into a carnival staple. Only in its use with
paperweights did lampworking keep its connection to art. Most lampwork pieces are
small as the tubes are small. Over time Ruffner has challenged this limitation and
created forms that are over table height.
FLUTEX: An industrial o f optically enhanced glass.
FRIT OR FRITTING: A mixture of two or more materials, fused by heating which,
after rapid cooling is ground into powder. Lead is a typical frit added to the glass
batch. Fritting is the process of making frit, also called sintering.
GAFFER: The master craftsman in charge of the glassmaking team, usually made of
eight men. Traditionally the gaffer worked under the direction o f the designer to
fabricate items. In the twentieth century this has been modified -- a gaffer now can
either lead a group and that group can be of any number.
GLASSHOUSE: A building dedicated to the fabricating of glass objects, usually
included a glass furnace with multiple openings for working hot glass.
GLORY HOLE: An opening on the side of the glass furnace that is used for
reheating glass. In the anti-establishment days of the late 1960s and early 1970s the
double meaning aspect of this term was a great source of amusement to the male
artists.
KILN FORMED: A warm glass process for shaping glass by heating it in a mold in
the furnace. It is considered a warm glass technique. Slumping, pate de verre, fusing
are three kiln-forming techniques. Proto-studio glass artists worked with kiln
forming because they could use equipment that was already set up for clay to
accomplish their ends.
LATTICINO: A term used to denote glass originally made in Venice and Murano
with a clear body to which embedded white threads are applied. The word refers to
these white threads. Dale Chihuly and others have taken up working in the
traditional technique.
LOST WAX: A method o f glass forming adopted from metal-forming. The object to
be formed is modeled in wax and then cast in plaster. Hot glass is introduced into the
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320
form and the wax melts and passes through vents, leaving the glass to conform to the
plaster mold. The work is annealed and then released, ready for hand finishing.
MALFIN: Glass batch with impurities.
MARVER: A flat, smooth forming surface used to roll warm glass, usually while
still on the blowpipe.
METAL: Another word for formulated but unformed glass.
MURRINE: A type of modem mosaic glassware. Mosaic glass is made from molten
glass in different colors that are heated together and then pulled to form thin canes.
These are then cut into disks and placed side-by-side and fused. The resultant sheet
is then formed into the desired object by slumping, blowing, etc. Murrina is the
singular form, murrine is the plural.
ONE-OFF: Unique
PASTORALE: Pastorale is Italian for a shepherd’s crook; but in glass making it
refers to the surface that the ferro is placed on for transferring to the furnace.
PATE DE VERRE: From the French for glass paste, it is a material produced from
grinding glass into a powder, adding a binder and flux, usually with colorants. This
mixture is then placed in a mold to fuse the material. Released from the mold, the
work produced is often hand finished. Popular during the nineteenth century, this
technology was lost until late twentieth century studio glassmakers rediscovered the
technology.
SLUMP: To heat glass until it is soft but not liquid, and will sag under its own
weight.
SODA LIME: A very malleable type of glass that combines small qualities of
sodium carbonate (soda) and calcined limestone (lime) to the glass batch.
TRIPLE HINGE DOOR: Invented by Dominick Labino, this closing device for the
glass melting furnace allowed the opening to be modified in thirds to ease accesses
to the furnace without obstructing the work area and without loosing heat from the
furnace.
TOP-BURNING FURNACE: A furnace in which the heating element is located at
the top.
VEILING: A decorative effect created by trapping air bubbles in hot glass.
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321
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Creator Lynn, Martha Drexler (author)

Core Title Challenging boundaries: The history and reception of American studio glass 1960 to 1990

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

School Graduate School

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Art History

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag American studies,Art History,Design and Decorative Arts,history, United States,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Advisor [illegible] (committee chair), [illegible] (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-81589

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