Through an American Looking-Glass
American glass has had a history of exuberance and excellence. While European cathedrals have their powerful stained glass windows, cut crystal, and Venetian goblets, perhaps nowhere else in the world has there been such a panoply of style, wit, and variety as here.

Taken together, the history of glass on our shores is a litany of practitioners who have given us pieces and processes that have altered and illuminated the way we look at the medium. Here’s a sampling of the people and institutions that have made a difference:

• Louis Comfort Tiffany brought the color and patterns of nature indoors in lamps, windows, and accessories;
• John LaFarge created stained glass windows rivaled the best of Europe, and whose invention of opalescent glass raised the bar;
• Paul Stankard makes paperweights whose botanical realism knows no match – except perhaps nature herself;

Paul Stankard working at Penland School of Crafts, Courtesy of Penland School of Crafts, Ann Hawthorne photograph

• Frank Lloyd Wright made representational stained glass windows an integral part of his Prairie houses, with designs at once stately, organic, and exuberant;
• Frederick Carder was founder and de facto creative director of the Steuben Glass Works first experimented with a small kiln, setting the stage for the studio glass movement;
• Corning Museum of Glass is recognized as having the finest collection of glass art objects;
• Edris Eckhardt modified factory techniques involving high temperatures, so she could create stunning work in her basement;

Edris Eckhardt, Eve, Courtesy of The New Bedford Museum of Glass, New Bedford, MA, Jim Goodenough photograph

• Harvey Littleton and Dominick Labino developed furnaces and ovens that worked at lower temperatures, and processes that gave birth to the studio glass movement;
• Dale Chihuly is a prolific showman, whose flamboyant glass forms interpret nature, and has awakened a new generation to the possibilities of the medium;
• Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington was founded with the help and patronage of John and Anne Gould Hauberg, and is perhaps the world’s premier glass institution;
• Marvin Lipofsky introduced studio glass to California, where it took on a whimsical turn with his colorful bubbles of glass;
• Toots Zynsky developed fillet-de-verre, a technique where glass rods of different colors are pulled into very thin long circular threads, and fused together, blending colors and creating wispy edges around the edge;
• Dante Marioni draws on ancient Greek and Etruscan pottery forms, and elongates them much as Giacometti sculptures interprets the human body;

Dante Marioni, Colored Vessel Display, 2006, Courtesy of the artist, Roger Schreiber photograph

• Urban Glass in Brooklyn, extended the reach of studio glass in 1977 by becoming the first artist-access glass center in America, allowing artists to work and experiment without going to art school or building their own studio.



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