Wright Auction

Harvey K. Littleton was a pioneering American glass artist and educator who is widely acknowledged as the “father” of the American studio glass movement. Born in Corning, New York, Littleton came from a family with a long history in the glass industry: his father was a physicist at Corning Glass Works and his mother was involved in the development of Pyrex cookware. The young Littleton grew up listening to many dinnertime conversations about the properties of glass, and visits to the Corning glassworks were a common occurrence.

After serving in the US Signal Corps during World War II, Littleton studied industrial design at the University of Michigan, earning a B.D. degree in 1947. In 1951 he received a M.A. degree from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and accepted a teaching position in the Department of Art and Art Education at the University of Wisconsin, where he remained on the faculty until 1976. Littleton’s initial specialty at Cranbrook was ceramics, not because he preferred it over glass, but because at that time working in glass outside of a factory setting came with a host of difficulties. The prevailing view was that glass was an industrial material requiring too large of an investment for individual artists.

Littleton did not forget about glass, however, and in 1957 took leave from his job to study ceramics in Europe; while there, he visited Catalonian artist Jean Sala who had, at one point, worked in glass. Sala showed Littleton the process of mixing, blowing, and decorating a batch of glass single-handedly from a furnace, thus demonstrating to Littleton that the idea of a one-man hot shop was attainable. He also spent two and a half months in Venice, visiting dozens of small glassworks on the island of Murano and buying blowpipes and other studio-related tools. By the late 1950s, after returning from his studies, Littleton began experimenting with hot glass in his studio in Madison, Wisconsin. It was not long before he realized glass’s versatility and its ability to convey a wide range of artistic expressions.

The final dose of inspiration that set Littleton on his lifelong path was the exhibition Glass 1959: A Special Exhibition of International Contemporary Glass organized by The Corning Museum of Glass. Littleton found it to be a disappointment, proclaiming in a letter: “As a teacher, I am burning to prove that the ‘mystery’ of glassworking is as teachable to artists as we have proven the mysteries of pottery were.” In 1960, he applied to the Guggenheim Foundation for funding toward his proposal for a university glassblowing program and the same year, at the American Craft Council conference, he announced his intention to create said program at the University of Wisconsin. In preparation for such an undertaking, the director of The Toledo Museum of Art, Otto Wittmann, offered him the opportunity to hold two experimental glass workshops at the museum.

In 1962, Littleton and Dominick Labino, a glass researcher at Johns-Manville, organized the two seminal glassblowing workshops at the museum. The Toledo Workshops were the first of their kind in the United States and brought together a group of artists from different disciplines to explore the potential of glass as a fine art medium. They were an enormous success and helped to launch the American studio glass movement. He founded the first university-level glass program in the United States at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he traveled extensively to give lectures and workshops. He also served as a mentor to countless young glass artists, including Marvin Lipofsky and Dale Chihuly, many of whom went on to make their own enormous impacts on the medium.

Littleton's work as an artist was innovative and he experimented with a wide range of techniques, including blowing, casting, slumping, and printing on glass plates (a concept he called vitreography). His sculptures often explored the relationship between form and color via a myriad of creative, organic shapes and patterns. Littleton’s creations have been exhibited in major museums and galleries around the world and he received numerous awards for his art, including the Gold Medal from the American Craft Council in 1983. A visionary artist and educator, Littleton helped to transform the way glass was perceived and used. His work and his teaching had a profound impact on the development of the American studio glass movement, and his legacy continues to inspire glass artists around the world as Helen Lee, current director of the Glass Lab at UW-Madison, notes: “What I see at the heart of Harvey Littleton’s legacy is a truly inspired, far-sighted vision that relied on experimentation, innovation, and education as a means for growth…These virtues of Littleton’s career are timeless.”