Harvey Littleton

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Harvey Littleton (b. 1922) is an American academic and glass artist. He is considered the founder of the modern American studio glass movement.

Early life and education

Harvey Littleton was born in Corning, New York where his father, Dr. Jesse T. Littleton, Jr., was Director of Research for Corning Glass Works. A physicist, Dr. Littleton is widely known today as the developer of Pyrex glassware. Harvey Littleton's introduction to the world of glass began when he was a toddler and his father would bring him to the laboratory. At home, the properties of glass and its manufacture were frequent topics at the family dinnertable. Dr. Littleton was fascinated by glass and believed that the material had almost unlimited uses. ^[1]

When he was eighteen Harvey Littleton enrolled at the University of Michigan to study physics. His choice of major was influenced by his father, who wanted one of his children to follow him in his profession (Littleton’s two elder brothers chose medicine and business as careers; his sister was an industrial psychologist). According to Littleton, "I aways thought I would be a physicist like my father." ^[2] Littleton's interest in art began in high school, where he took life drawing and sculpture classes. He also took a sculpture class during his freshman year at the University of Michigan. ^[3] His preference for art eventually proved stronger than filial duty. After three semesters of physics he transferred to Cranbrook Academy of Art for the 1941 spring semester. There he worked part-time as a studio assistant to sculptor Marshall Fredericks (1908-1998). Dr. Littleton was not pleased by his son's decision. Harvey enlisted his elder sister Martha's aid in pleading his case to their father, and a compromise was reached. Harvey would return to the University of Michigan that fall, but not to physics. The study of fine art was not part of the compromise; Littleton agreed to major in industrial design, instead. ^[4]

During the summer break in 1941 Littleton found employment as an inspector at Corning Glass Works. It was his job to break to glass coffeepots and other cookware that did not meet specification. The following summer he worked as a mold maker for the Vycor Multiform project laboratory. There he cast his first work in glass, an academic torso modeled in clay, in white Vycor. In September 1942 Littleton was drafted into the U.S. Army Signal Corps, serving overseas first in North Africa and then in Italy. In early 1946 he was in England, waiting his turn to be shipped home. To fill the time he attended classes at the Brighton School of Art ^[5]. There he took classes in everything from drawing and ceramics to metal work and lettering. In a scupture class he modeled and fired a small clay torso that he carried home in his barracks bag. Once back in Corning, New York Littleton cast the torso at the glassworks, again in Vycor, as a small edition.

He finished his degree in Industrial Design in 1947 and, with the encouragement of his father, submitted a proposal to Corning Glass Works to create a workshop within the factory to research the aesthetic properties of industrial glass. The proposal was turned down. Littleton and two friends opened a small design firm in Ann Arbor 1947. In addition to his design work, Littleton taught night classes in a private pottery until 1949, when he took a position teaching ceramics at the Toledo Museum of Art School. During this time he commuted between Toledo and Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he was enrolled as a graduate student in ceramics at Cranbrook Academy of Art. For that portion of the week when Littleton was in Toledo, he stayed at the apartment of Hal Lotterman. It was at one of Lotterman's Wednesday night poker games that Littleton met Dominic Labino. ^[6] who would be so important to the success of Littleton's first glass workshop a dozen years later.

At Cranbrook Littleton studied under Finnish-born potter Maija Grotell (1899-1973). Upon receiving the Master of Fine Arts in 1951, Littleton immediately began his teaching career in ceramics in the Department of Art and Art Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Work and research in ceramics and glass

Littleton’s production as a potter focused on funtional stoneware, which he sold in Chicago-area art fairs and in galleries from Chicago to New York City. He exhibited in group shows in the United States, including "Designer Craftsmen U.S.A.", sponsored by the American Craft Council in 1953 and received a purchase award in the 1954 "Ceramic National" exhibition at the Syracuse Museum of Art. His work gained international exoposure in 1956 at the the "First International Exposition of Ceramics" in Cannes, France.

He received several research grants from the University of Wisconsin. One of these, in 1957, took him to Jugtown Pottery in Seagrove, North Carolina, where he conducted a study of vapor glazing. In the same year a proposal to investigate the influence of Islamic culture on contemporary Spanish pottery necessitated an extended trip to Europe. He was asked by Corning Glass Works to do some reaserch into glass on this trip, as well. While he was in Corning, New York to discuss the project, he asked the company's president, Arthur Houghton, if he knew of any artists in Europe who worked alone with glass. Houghton mentioned Jean Sala, who worked in a small atelier in Montparnasse, Paris. When Littleton visited him, Sala had not worked in glass for a decade. The rwo spoke about glass and Littleton admired the works on display in the studio. As a parting gift Sala gave Littleton some of his glass working tools. ^[7]

Glass seminar

In 1959, he began to investigate the possibilities of glass as a medium. Along with Dominick Labino, in the summer of 1962, he led a glassblowing seminar at the Toledo Museum of Art, introducing the idea that glass could be melted, worked, and blown by the artist in a studio, rather than requiring the regimented production process of the glass industry.

Together with Labino, a glass scientist, who created a small and easy to assemble furnace, Littleton established a glass studio at the university in 1963 and began to offer a graduate course in glassblowing and glass art. Through this program, he would train many prominent glass artists — among his students were Dale Chihuly, Fritz Driesbach, Christopher Ries, Marvin Lipofsky and Tom McGlauchlin.

Littleton went on to serve as the chairman of the university's art department until his retirement from teaching in 1976, and in 1977 was named professor emeritus. It was around this time that Littleton, besides glass blowing, also started exploring the art of vitreography — printmaking using glass plates.

Littleton's artwork is exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Corning Museum of Glass, the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Arts & Design, the Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, Japan, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Decorative Arts Museums in both Prague and Vienna.

He resides in Spruce Pine, North Carolina.

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