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.

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

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 J. Stankard makes paperweights whose botanical realism knows no match – except perhaps nature herself;
• 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;
• 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.

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

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