Photo: John Littleton.

Harvey Littleton

American artist Harvey K. Littleton (1922–2013) earned a BD in industrial design from the University of Michigan in 1947 and an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1951 before joining the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) as a ceramist. In the late 1950s, Littleton began exploring the possibility of glassblowing in a studio setting; two glassblowing workshops he organized at the Toledo Museum of Art in 1962 are widely credited as founding moments in the American studio glass movement. Littleton went on to establish the first university-level glass program in the United States at UW-Madison and had a significant impact on the glass field as an artist and teacher. He established a studio and printing facility in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, in 1976, after he retired from teaching, and later founded the Spruce Pine Batch Company, which has been making glass batch since 1986.

Works

Blue Lyrical, 1988. H: 22 in, W: 20 in, D: 12 in. Image courtesy of John Littleton.

Crown II, 1984. H: 12.5 in, W: 23 in, D: 21 in. Image courtesy of John Littleton.

Anthropomorphic Vase, 1962. Image courtesy of John Littleton.

Media

Catherine Whalen discusses Harvey Littleton and the beginning of studio glass.

1:02 Transcript

Catherine Whalen discusses Harvey Littleton and the beginning of studio glass. Oral history interview with Catherine Whalen, March 22, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:02.

Catherine Whalen: So in the American context, the studio glass movement really gets going in the early 1960s and that happens when Harvey Littleton and Dominick Labino essentially figure out how individual makers can blow glass outside of the factory setting, right? So having a small furnace that you can set up that allows you to do that. And there are some very important workshops in Toledo, Ohio where they’re demonstrating and sharing this technique. And, you know, the first efforts were, in some sense, they were very experimental. So they’re actually doing things like melting down marbles, right, and blowing, you know—finding and using that as a source material. So these first pieces are really about much of—very much about experimentation. They’re figuring out techniques on their own, and they’re figuring out what kind of forms to make. And, you know, vases for example are an early dominant form. And I should say Littleton comes out of the Corning [Corning, New York] glass setting, right? The factory setting, and then becomes interested in this other way of making, outside that setting.

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James Carpenter talks about Dominick Labino and Harvey Littleton bringing glass to university programs.

0:15 Transcript

James Carpenter talks about Dominick Labino and Harvey Littleton bringing glass to university programs. Oral history interview with James Carpenter by Barb Elam and Jesse Merandy, September 20, 2018, JCDA Studios, New York, New York. Clip length: 00:14.

James Carpenter: Yeah you had like Nick Labino and Harvey Littleton and you had a couple of people that really did understand the industrial furnace construction idea and how you scale that down into a very modest scale that you can put into a university program.

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