Harvey Littleton

Harvey Littleton is considered a founder of the American studio glass movement. Littleton’s father was the director of glass research at Corning Glassworks in Corning, New York, and Harvey was exposed to industrially made glass through summer jobs at the factory. Littleton received an MFA in ceramics from Cranbrook

Academy of Art in Michigan in 1951 and was hired as a ceramics professor at the University of Wisconsin. Meeting French glass artist Jean Sala opened him up to the possibilities of glassblowing as a technique for individual artists. In March 1962, Littleton organized the first glass workshop on the grounds of the Toledo Museum of Art, using a glass formula developed by chemist Dominick Labino. That fall he began the glass program at the University of Wisconsin, where several key figures in the studio glass movement studied, such as Marvin Lipofsky, Dale Chihuly, and Fritz Dreisbach. Littleton went on to become extremely influential in the glass movement, both as a teacher and as an innovator of new forms in the medium.

Education: Brighton School of Art, Brighton, England; Bachelor of Design, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; M.F.A., Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomingfield Hills, Michigan