15 glass artists you should know

In 1962, the Ohio-based ceramicist Harvey Littleton kickstarted the studio glass movement – which treated the material as an artistic medium, rather than one only for mass production – when he developed a way to melt glass at a low-enough temperature to blow in his studio, rather than in a factory. Here we present fifteen artists who have had a significant influence on glass culture over the six decades since, clustered mostly in places with particularly strong glassmaking traditions.

Dale Chihuly (b. 1941)

Probably the most influential glass artist in the US, Dale Chihuly is known for his large-scale exhibitions that highlight the creative interplay between glass and the outdoor environment. One of the first Americans to study at a Murano glassworks in Venice, he co-founded the Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State in 1971, and built up the glass department at the Rhode Island School of Design. After injuries to his eye and shoulder, Chihuly stopped blowing glass in 1979, but has continued to direct a team of assistants at his ever-expanding studio to create lavish spectacles of spiralling glass in a rich spectrum of colour.

Colin Reid (b. 1953)

Colin Reid studied painting at St Martin’s School of Art in London before retraining as a scientific glassblower, making laboratory equipment out of borosilicate glass, and then studying art glass at Stourbridge College from 1978 to 81. Now based in the English town of Stroud, his kiln-cast sculptures can be grouped into two main styles: solid pieces of crystal clear optical glass that capture natural or manmade forms, and the ‘colour saturation’ works, whose undulating strata of opaque powdered glass are balanced between panes of float glass and cast in simple, eternal forms like the circle.

Martin Janecký (b. 1980)

Within Bohemia’s long tradition of fine glassware and kiln-cast sculpture, Prague-based artist Martin Janecký is an original. Drawing on the techniques of earlier masters, such as his former teacher William Morris, he is now reckoned to be one of the best hot-sculptors in the world. Out of a glowing lump of molten glass on the end of a pipe, which he sculpts from ‘inside the bubble’, he is able to coax human faces, hands and skulls with an uncanny realism.

Preston Singletary (b. 1963)

Preston Singletary made his mark as one of the few Native Americans practising in the early days of the studio glass movement. Today the Seattle-based artist is considered among the leading American glass artists, and works with both blowing and casting. He draws on the animal and bird motifs and mythology of his Tlingit heritage for inspiration, transforming them into evocative, subtly coloured meditations on the relationship between ancient tradition and modern materials.

Silvia Levenson (b. 1957)

Silvia Levenson’s haunting kiln-cast sculptures can be found in museums around the world. They reflect her experience of being torn between Argentina, where she grew up, and Italy, where she fled in 1981 during her home country’s period of state-sponsored terrorism and still lives today. Her work uses day-to-day objects such as children’s clothes cast in glass, to explore the relationships between people, or families and society, that are often left unspoken, as well as the trauma caused by the assassinations and forced adoptions of orphaned children during Argentina’s dictatorship.

Lino Tagliapietra (b. 1934)

For centuries, the glassblowers of Murano – a series of bridge-linked islands in Venice – were known for the jealous secrecy with which they guarded their skills. But with Lino Tagliapietra – known for his delicate, technically complex sculptures – the cat was out of the bag. Born in Murano, he began his apprenticeship on the Italian island in 1945 and achieved the status of maestro at the young age of 25. After Chihuly (above) visited Venice, Tagliapietra increasingly shared techniques with American glassmakers. In 1979, he spent a summer as resident artist in the Pilchuck Glass School, and in 1989 established himself as an independent artist, dividing his time between Murano and Seattle.

Nancy Callan (b. 1964)

Nancy Callan stands out as one of the most notable women in the early American studio glass movement. Her blown sculptures and hotworked panels involve classic Venetian techniques such as reticello (net-like patterns of canes), incalmo (layering) and the use of murrine (cross-sections of fused canes). The Seattle-based artist's works exhibit a lightness of touch that can only be obtained after years of practice, combined with a playfulness of spirit and pop culture references.

Jean-Michel Othoniel (b. 1964)

A rare example of an artist working in glass who has been accepted by the fine arts world, Jean-Michel Othoniel began as a sculptor in wax, obsidian and sulphur before turning to glass in 1993. To make his large-scale sculptures, he works with a team of assistants in his studio in Paris, alongside glassmakers from Murano, Japan, India and elsewhere. Formed from loops of mirrored spheres or rivers of glass bricks, his artworks create the impression of an illusory world and explore themes from the introspective to the mathematical.

Peter Layton (b. 1937)

It is hard to imagine what the UK studio glass movement would have been like without Peter Layton. Like many glass artists, he initially trained in ceramics, but became interested in studio glass in 1965 while teaching in the US. In 1976, after returning to the UK, he established the London Glassblowing workshop and gallery, now based on Bermondsey Street, which over the years has nurtured many of Britain’s best glass artists; he later co-founded the Contemporary Glass Society.

Philip Baldwin (b. 1947) and Monica Guggisberg (b. 1955)

Philip Baldwin, from the US, and Monica Guggisberg, from Switzerland, have worked together as Baldwin & Guggisberg since 1980 and lived in Wales since 2015. Their distinctive aesthetic combines formal perfection with a rich colour palette and strangely shaped, almost anthropomorphic vessels. These are made out of blown layers of glass, which are then sandblasted or cut through using the battuto technique, to achieve a deeply textured surface suggestive of beaten metal.

Hiroshi Yamano (b. 1956)

Hiroshi Yamano is one of the leading figures in modern Japanese art glass. To make his sculptures, he blows glass and rolls it over silver leaf. This technique, inspired by traditional Japanese metal-working, results in a fusion of materials upon which patterns can be etched. Yamano’s themes include stylised motifs drawn from the Japanese artistic tradition, such as fish, flowers, birds and tree branches, arranged on vessels; the resulting works give the appearance of usefulness but in fact can be appreciated purely for their own sake, as art.

Clare Belfrage (b. 1966)

Clare Belfrage has been working in glass since the 1980s, but the Adelaide-based artist came to international attention at the turn of the millennium, with exhibitions in Ohio and Lisbon. She has developed the unusual technique of cane drawing into a sensitive means of expression. By trailing fine lines of colour over blown glass cores, she builds up layers of pattern to evoke ‘a sense of rhythm across a form’. She then sandblasts and polishes the surface to make it more tactile and draw the viewer’s eye through to the interior. The resulting sculptures, with their hazy tones, capture the shifting moods of Australia’s natural environment.

Sibusiso Mhlanga (b. 1960)

Based at Ngwenya Glassworks in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Sibusiso Mhlanga has done much to nurture a glass tradition in southern Africa. The glassworks was founded in 1979 by Swedish Aid. Mhlanga was one of ten local people hired out of over 600 applicants, going to train in Kosta before returning to Ngwenya as production manager. Following a period of closure in the 80s, when Sweden pulled its funding because the glassworks was selling to apartheid South Africa, it now claims to be ‘the only glassblowing factory in Africa’, and uses exclusively recycled glass. Mhlanga is a co-owner and has reportedly ‘trained the entire workforce of 60 people, including blowers, grinders and packers’.

Bertil Vallien (b. 1938)

From 1963, when he started working at the Åfors glassworks (later Kosta Boda), until the late twentieth century, Bertil Vallien was Sweden’s foremost glass artist, and the defining figure in the Kosta brand. Born in Stockholm, the son of a master painter, Vallien worked as a decorator before studying art and design at the city’s Konstfack, the University of Arts, Crafts and Design. He adapted the industrial technique of sandcasting to glass, using it to craft dreamlike sculptures that seem to absorb rather than reflect light.