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Harvey Littleton Glass Artist American (Corning, New York, 1922 - ) active Spruce Pine, North Carolina View objects by this artist.

Born 1922, Resides in Spruce Pine, North Carolina

Harvey Littleton attended the Brighton School of Art in England. He lives in Spruce Pines, North Carolina. Littleton is one of the country's most important teachers of glassmaking. He was named Professor Emeritus of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1977. In 1982, he received an honorary doctorate from the Philadelphia College of Art.
His work is found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, in Kyoto, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Decorative Arts Museums in Prague and Vienna.
Source: http://nmaa-ryder.si.edu/collections/exhibits/whc/whc-intro.html

(http://www.littletoncollection.com/Littleton,%20Harvey/harvey_littleton.htm   5-6-08)
HARVEY K. LITTLETON b. 1922 Corning, New York; resides in North Carolina

The man called the father of the Studio Glass Movement was not at first a glass artist. After receiving a master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Arts he embarked on the career of potter. Littleton received recognition for his work as a ceramicist in a national exhibition sponsored by the American Crafts Council at the First International Exposition of Ceramics in Cannes, France.

In 1959 he began to investigate the possibility of glass as a medium, and in 1960 had melted glass and cold-worked lumps of cullet.  In the summer of 1962 the Toledo Museum of Art invited Littleton to lead a glassblowing workshop.  It was in that seminar that Littleton introduced the idea that glass could be mixed and melted, blown and worked in the studio by the artist. Up to that time it was widely believed that glass objects could only be made in the highly structured, mass-produced world of the glass industry where the labor of making glass is divided between designers and skilled craftsmen.

    That fall Littleton, who had been employed since 1951 as a ceramics teacher at the University of Wisconsin, began to offer glassblowing classes through the university at his farm outside Madison, Wisconsin.  In 1963 he established a graduate course and glass studio at the university that attracted as students such well-known artists as Marvin Lipofsky and Dale Chihuly.

     Museum recognition for Littleton's work in glass soon followed in the form of solo exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago (1963) and the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York (l964). His work has been collected by the Museum of Arts and Design, New York City; Cooper Hewitt National Museum of Design, Smithsonian Institution, New York; Corning Museum of Glass, New York; Detroit Institute of Art, Los Angeles County Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Renwick Gallery and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC among numerous others.

    Littleton retired from teaching in 1976 to devote his time fully to his work. He moved to Spruce Pine, North Carolina, where he set up his glass studio and produced his most technically demanding and beautiful series of works: the sinuous "Lyrical Movement" and "Implied Movement" groups, "Descending" forms and exuberant "Crowns" composed of multiple soaring arcs.

In the middle of the 20th century Harvey Littleton led the search for a way to move glass production away from its industrial factory environment. With Dominick Labino, Littleton developed a studio sized furnace for use in artist’s studios.  He continued to experiment and innovate in glass through-out his career. He was a tireless promoter and teacher of studio glass.  His pieces speak to the fluidity and sculptural nature of glass.
  for HOT COLOR cool glass 5/08 Anne Gochenour





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