HARVEY LITTLETON (AMERICAN, 1922-2013)

Footnote
Having grown up in Corning, New York, Littleton recalls visiting the Corning glass factory from as early as 6 years old. Corning was, and still is considered the epicentre of glass innovation and were instrumental in the invention of Pyrex in 1915, automobile windshields in 1962 and more recently when approached by Apple to develop robust display screens for the iPhone in 2007.

In 1958 Littleton visited Murano, a collection of islands off the coast of Venice, another glass-making epicentre producing as early as the 13th century. Known mostly for art-glass, the glassmakers of Murano were also heavily involved in practical glass innovations. Their isolation from mainland Venice was, in-part, chosen in order to better keep technical advancements contained and to ensure that accidental fires did not spread to the rest of the city. 

Littleton began his artistic career working in ceramics and it wasn’t until that inspirational visit to Murano that Littleton felt that glassmaking could be achieved in an accessible way. He saw glassmaking on an individual, rather than commercial scale, for the purposes of art, which influenced Littleton’s founding of the Studio Glass Movement. 

Littleton is often called ‘The Father of the Studio Glass Movement’ as he aimed to make glassmaking accessible to the individual studio artist at a time when glassmaking was only really achieved in a factory setting. The Studio Glass Movement also transformed glassware from something seen in a typically functional sense to pieces made as pure works of art with direct involvement from the designers themselves in the crafting process. 

After he returned, Littleton experimented with glassmaking techniques in his studio and started sculpting in 1962. It was also at this point that he began teaching glassmaking a The University of Wisconsin, calling himself ‘an evangelist’ for the medium due to how much he valued sharing his methods. It was from his workshop at the Toledo Museum of Art that he set up alongside Dominick Labino in 1962 where the Studio Glass Movement spread across the world. 

Works like ‘Purple Crossed Forms’ were made using individual coloured cups of glass, placed one inside the other so they become concentric.

(His technique can be seen here in an interview made by The Corning Museum of Glass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utFQrg7IA64

These series of cups are then pulled and distorted to form undulating sculptures whilst retaining the same relationship between the forms inside the sculpture. Littleton was interested in the use of colour but more so in the strength of the form, in the bending of the glass. The inherent frozen movement of the piece was an important factor in his work and is emanated perfectly within this sculpture.

Condition Report
One very small abrasion to the edge of the flat ridge on the standing arch section, visible on close inspection; otherwise sound throughout.