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Harvey Littleton

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

Littleton was born in Corning, New York. He attended the Brighton School of Art in the United Kingdom and achieved a MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Arts. Initially he chose a career as a potter. He gained recognition for his work at the First International Exposition of Ceramics in Cannes, France.

Beginning in 1951, he was employed as a professor at the University of Wisconsin, where he taught ceramics. In 1959, he began to investigate the possibilities of glass as a medium. In the summer of 1962, leading a glassblowing seminar at the Toledo Museum of Art, he introduced 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.

In 1963 he established a glass studio at the university 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, Christopher Ries, Marvin Lipofsky, Erwin Eisch, 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. He has since retired from glassblowing to explore the art of vitreographs — 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 American Craft Museum, 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.