From Tiffany to Chihuly
Twentieth-Century Art Glass
Mrs. Ray Smith, Jr. Collection

June 27 - September 8, 2002

From Tiffany to Chihuly presented a selection of the glass collected by Mrs. Ray Smith, Jr. over the last forty years. This international collection spans nearly a century of studio and art glass and contains important work by many leading glass artists including Dale Chihuly, Nicolas Africano, Harvey K. Littleton, Pavel Hlava and Javier Gomez.

Until the mid-twentieth century glass was primarily produced in factories by large groups of artisans. The earliest glass shown here comes from two prominent American studios: Tiffany Studios and Steuben Glass Works, Corning, NY. The designer and painter, Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) established the Tiffany Glass Co. in 1886. Tiffany drew inspiration from Art Nouveau and invented new chemical compositions for glass, but did not actually make the glass produced in his workshops and studios. In 1894, the company received a registered trademark for hand-wrought glass called Favrile.

A competitor of Tiffany, the English-born Fredrick Carder co-founded Steuben Glass Works with Thomas G. Hawkes in 1903. Carder created an iridescent glass similar to Favrile known as Aurene. A prolific glass designer, Carder produced several series including the Verre de soie and Aurene pieces shown here. In the 1960s, the American Harvey K. Littleton revolutionized the art of glass by creating a day tank furnace. This made it possible for individual artists to create art glass independent of a studio or factory. Born 1922, Littleton experimented with blowing, casting and pulling glass. He is recognized for introducing studio glass courses to American universities. The first studio was set up in 1962 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison where he was an influential teacher of artists including Dale Chihuly and Tom McLauchlin. Chihuly is known for his designs of brightly colored blown glass forms resembling seashells and floral shapes as in Seaform, 1983. He is the director and co-founder with Mary Ann Zynski of the Pilchuck Glass School of Seattle, WA. The school trained artists including Martin Blank, Sydney Cash, Mark Peiser, Molly Stone, and Michael Glancy and features master glassmakers Pino Signoretto, Therman Statom and Lino Tagliapietra whose work is shown here.

Also featured are several Czechoslovakian artists including Pavel Hlava, Michael Pavlic, Pavel Tomecko, Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova. Hlava is considered the creator of modern Czech glass while the team of Libensky and Brychtova are known for their molded glass work. Nicolas Africano’s cast glass figures are modeled after his wife and muse, Rebecca. Woman with Fruit was created using the lost-wax method, a slow and labor intensive multi-step process for producing complicated forms. The glassmaker Emily Brock creates unique kilnworked glass interiors by fusing and melting glass over molds. She then assembles individual pieces to create replicas of interior spaces such as gazebos, restaurants, living space and greenhouses.
An avid collector, Mrs. Ray Smith, Jr. has been a generous supporter of the Haggerty Museum since the mid-1960s. Her gifts have significantly enhanced the Haggerty Museum of Art’s collections of glass, modern prints and African art.

Exhibition Sponsor
Mrs. Ray Smith, Jr. Program Endowment Fund