What happens when you discover two eye-popping ideas: that glass could be melted at cooler temperatures than originally thought, and just as unprecedented, that glass could be melted, worked, and blown by an artist in a residential studio? If your names are Dominick Labino and Harvey Littleton, the next practical thing to do is to put up a university glass studio where you can train future glass artists. Labino and Littleton are considered as the brains behind the modern studio glass movement in the early 1960s with the just mentioned discovery.

Other glass art pioneers like Dale Chihuly, Ben Moore, and Richard Marquis received Fulbright scholarships that helped fund travel for glassmaking studies abroad. Where else to go in Italy but Murano? Murano, as an aside, is of course the community behind masterpieces like crystalline glass, enameled glass, glass with threads of gold, multicolored glass, milk glass, and imitation gemstones made of glass.

Maestros Checco Ongara and Lino Tagliapietra (who was ranked Maestro at 21) were invited to the Pilchuck Glass School of Stanwood, Washington in 1979. This was the start of an unforgettable sharing of knowledge that criss-crossed both sides of the Atlantic. Glass art in the United States will never be the same.

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