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Harvey Littleton




Harvey Littleton (b. 1922 ) is an American academic and Glass Art ist. He is considered the founder of the modern American studio glass movement.

Littleton was born in Corning, New York . He attended the Brighton School of Art in the United Kingdom and achieved a MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Arts. Initially he chose a career as a Potter . He gained recognition for his work at the First International Exposition of Ceramics in Cannes, France .

Beginning in 1951, he was employed as a professor at the University Of Wisconsin-Madison , where he taught ceramics. In 1959, he began to investigate the possibilities of Glass as a medium. Along with Dominick Labino , in the summer of 1962, he led a glassblowing seminar at the Toledo Museum of Art, introducing the idea that glass could be melted, worked, and blown by the artist in a studio, rather than requiring the regimented production process of the glass industry.

Together with Labino, a glass scientist, who created a small and easy to assemble furnace, Littleton established a glass studio at the university in 1963 and began to offer a graduate course in Glassblowing and glass art. Through this program, he would train many prominent glass artists — among his students were Dale Chihuly , Christopher Ries , Marvin Lipofsky and Tom McGlauchlin .

Littleton went on to serve as the chairman of the university's art department until his retirement from teaching in 1976, and in 1977 was named Professor Emeritus . It was around this time that Littleton, besides glass blowing, also started exploring the art of vitreographs — Printmaking using glass plates.

Littleton's artwork is exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum Of Art , the Corning Museum Of Glass , the Smithsonian Institution , the American Craft Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, Japan , the Victoria and Albert Museum in London , and the Decorative Arts Museums in both Prague and Vienna .

He resides in Spruce Pine, North Carolina .


REFERENCES


  • Byrd, Joan Falconer. "Harvey Littleton: The Core of Everything... Is the Work." Arts Journal 4 (May 1979): 2–3.

  • Colescott, Warrington W. "Harvey Littleton." Craft Horizons 19 (Nov. 1959): 20–23.

  • Littleton, Harvey. Glassblowing: A Search for Form. New York: Van Nostrand-Reinhold, 1971. (ISBN 0-442-24341-3)

  • Warmus, William. "Harvey Littleton: Glass Master." Glass 72 (Fall 1998): 26–35.