Development of Studio Glass

Glass art is that part of the glass industry where glass gets used as an artistic medium. Applications can include stained glass, working glass in a torch flame (lampworking), glass beadmaking, glass casting, glass fusing, and glass blowing.

As a decorative and functional medium, glass was extensively developed in Egypt and Assyria, brought to the fore by the Romans, who developed the art of glassblowing, with the stained glass windows in European cathedrals as living proof of spectacular art and skill. Great ateliers like Tiffany, Lalique, Daum, Gallé, the Corning schools and Steuben Glass Works took glass art to the highest levels.

(Tiffany, Lalique, Steuben)

Glass from Murano (also known as Venetian glass) is the result of hundreds of years of refinement and invention. While there are currently more hotshops and glass artists working in Seattle (USA), Murano is still considered as the birthplace of modern glass art.

Prior to the early 1960s, the term "glass art" referred to glass made for decorative use, usually by teams of factory workers, taking glass from furnaces with a thousand or more pounds of glass. This form of glass art, of which Tiffany and Steuben in the U.S.A., Gallé in France and Hoya Crystal in Japan, Royal Leerdam Crystal in The Netherlands and Kosta Boda in Sweden are perhaps the best known, grew out of the factory system in which all glass objects were hand or mold blown by teams of 4 or more men. The turn of the 19th Century was the height of the old art glass movement while the factory glass blowers were being replaced by mechanical bottle blowing and continuous window glass.

The United States has had two phases of development in glass. The early and mid-1900s had a number of factories such as Fenton, Stuben and others turning out both functional and artistic pieces. The second phase of glass in the United States happened in the 60's when Harvey Littleton, Dominick Labino and Marvin Lipofsky kicked off the studio glass movement by creating small-scale furnaces for the use of glass as an artisic medium. This modern studio glass movement caught on in design schools and Littleton would go on to found the first fine art glass program at the University of Wisconsin at Madison; Marvin Lipofsky, founded the second university-level glass program at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964; and Dale Chihuly initiated the glass program at the Rhode Island School of Design that same year.

(Harvey Littleton, Dominic Labino, Marvin Lipofsky, Dale Chihuly)

As more artists learned from artists before them, a growth of studio art glass spread across the country, with the largest concentration of glass artists working in Seattle. The Pilchuck glass school near Seattle has become a mecca for glass artists from all over the world. Students, who may actually be college students or established artists, have the opportunity to attend masterclasses and exchange skills and information in a environment dedicated solely to glass based arts.

Art glass education - back to basics

My first day at school, I felt like any first grader, who doesn’t want to let go of mommy’s hand (of course I couldn’t hold my own hand!). As my portfolio of 25 years ago exempted me from the first two academic years, I was allowed to start in the 3rd and final year of the National Diploma course. I was the only newby in a class of 15 old hands at art school! Due to my many years of working experience in the real world, I got another exemption in that 3rd year and eventually had a syllabus that contained: art history, life drawing and practical glass.

The art history classes were not too bad –I could sit somewhere in the back, blend into the background and work on my own. The focus of 3rd year was on the modern art trends starting at the end of the 19th century and developing into the vast domain of contemporary art. This part of the syllabus encouraged reading of artists biographies and reviews, researching art works in the various disciplines (sculpture, painting, other) and visiting galleries, analysing movements, attending talks, and more.

After a hiatus of 25 years, connecting again in a serious way with the art world and modern art especially was quite fascinating. I had been out of proper art education for a quarter century and in a way lost touch. Being 25 years more "mature", it also made me look at modern art in a new way.

The most intimidating was the drawing: one 45 year old together with fifteen 22-ish year olds drawing live model! Of both sexes! When I did my degree in Belgium, I was at an all girl technicon and our lecturer only ever arranged female models – imagine my shock. It does seem however that I did a reasonable good job at hiding my discomfort, because I don’t think any of the younger ones ever figured it out. It was a great relief that – even though I hadn’t done live model drawing for a quarter century – I seemed to have had retained my technique and I didn’t have to hang my head in shame in front of the other, younger students. We started off with sketch drawings and focusing on various techniques and materials to get a better understanding about the different results in rendering a sketch with pencil, charcoal or pastel. Although the bulk of our work was concentrated on drawing the human body in all its detail, facets and movement, some of our sessions took us to the outdoors to observe and interpret nature.

The practical glass classes were a dream come through and I enjoyed that to the full. I got hands on opportunities to experiment and with every new technique that I learned, new ideas popped up in my mind and the list of projects that I would want to try grew longer every day.