By Lynda Olsen Adelson
The American
Studio Glass Movement, which began in the early 1960s, is a new phenomenon in
the century’s long history of glass as an artistic medium.
For the
first time in more than 3500 years, technology has allowed artists to make
glass alone and unaided, without the necessity of a factory environment. Prior
to the 1960s, glass was made only in large scale industrial settings.
At
established art glass factories like Steuben (
United States
),
Waterford
(
Ireland
) or Baccarat (
France
), hundreds of employees work in an industrial environment, mass producing
glass objects. These factories produce a large number of pieces each day, and
employees are generally assigned to one part of the multi-stage process
involved in making each object. There are designers, glass batchers,
glassblowers, cutters, polishers, etc.
American
studio glass differs from factory glass in that the individual artist
completes all aspects of the creation of a piece, from design through
signature. These studio artists generally "batch" their own glass,
using sand (silica), ash and metallic oxides to create their raw material. The
quantity of work they produce is extremely limited. Most studio glass artists
will make fewer pieces in their lifetimes than factories like Baccarat or
Waterford
will make in one day.
In 1962,
Harvey Littleton, professor of art at the
University
of
Wisconsin
, and Dominick Labino presented a glass workshop in conjunction with the
Toledo Museum of Art. These men are recognized internationally as the
"fathers" of the American Studio Glass Movement.
Convinced
that it was finally possible for an individual artist to undertake
glassblowing by working entirely alone,
Littleton
and Labino provided information on furnace construction, glass formulas,
tools, techniques, etc.
The
Toledo
workshop was the beginning of the American Studio Glass Movement. In the
decades since then the number of American Studio Glass Artists has gone from
virtually none to more than 1,000. Internationally, American glass artists are
acknowledged as the undisputed leaders in creativity and originality. Dale
Chihuly, a
Seattle
artist who established the famed
Pilchuck
Glass
School
, is widely credited with advancing public awareness of glass as an artistic
medium.
The Corning
Museum of Glass is recognized as having the world's finest collections of
glass art objects, dating from antiquity through the 20th century. Each year
the
Corning
Museum
sponsors an international juried competition, which attracts more than 2,000
submissions from all over the world, with only 100 pieces selected for
inclusion in the museum's New Glass Review and permanent collection of 20th
Century Glass. Since the beginning of the New Glass Competition in 1979,
American artists have dominated this important award contest, consistently
accounting for more than half of the 100 winning selections each year.
Lynda
and Michael Adelson have collected American Studio Glass since the
mid 1979s. They founded Seekers Glass Gallery in
Cambria
,
California
, in 1981. In May of 2005 they became partners in the business with Alice and
David Dietderich. CLICK on About
Seekers for more information about the owners
Many of
Seekers’ 200 American artists have shown their work at major venues and are
in represented in collections worldwide, including The Smithsonian;
New York
’s
Metropolitan
Museum
; The Corning Museum of Glass; The White House Collection;
London
’s
Victoria
and
Albert
Museum
as well as in major museums throughout the
U.S.
and the world.
