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This group of early American studio glass from the Pfannebecker collection recalls a time that seems very far away and long ago – the late 1960s and 1970s, when glass was a new material with exciting potential for art, craft, and design. The earlier pieces may not have the technical skill and aesthetic polish that these same American artists, and others, would exhibit in glass art of the following decades, but they reflect the excitement of experimentation and innovation. They impart a sense of history being made in the moment, of discoveries that would shape the next 50 years in glass.

The earlier pieces may not have the technical skill and aesthetic polish that these same American artists, and others, would exhibit in glass art of the following decades, but they reflect the excitement of experimentation and innovation.

It is interesting that Robert Pfannebecker collected glass at a time when relatively few collectors did. In the early years, as glass historian and critic William Warmus has observed, people were not really sure that this new glass would succeed. Most collectors and museums did not begin to consider studio glass in earnest until around the time of the Corning Museum’s 1979 touring exhibition, New Glass: A Worldwide Survey. Artists working in glass in the 1960s and 1970s did not enjoy the vibrant market for studio glass that would characterize later decades, and which was due to the collective effort of artists, collectors, and galleries. Nevertheless, the excitement of pioneering a new medium was impossible to resist.

Yet these small pieces represent important breakthroughs in how glass could be re-imagined in terms of functional use and aesthetic purpose.

In the Pfannebecker collection, the goblets by Dale Chihuly, the abstract sculpture by Marvin Lipofsky, and the small bottles and cups by Richard Marquis (all rare and hard to find now) illustrate the rebellious direction of early American studio glass. Lipofsky combined odd materials, such as flocking, with his amorphic, decidedly non-utilitarian glass shapes, while Chihuly made a goblet like no one before him, pouring hot glass onto a cement floor and then using jacks to pick up the molten material and attach it to a cup that he had blown a few moments earlier. In the annals of glassmaking, these thousands-of-years-of-history-erasing efforts seemed all wrong. Yet these small pieces represent important breakthroughs in how glass could be re-imagined in terms of functional use and aesthetic purpose.

The Pfannebecker group is not only interesting for its documentation of the early production of American glass artists who would become internationally famous in their field. It also records a specific moment in American studio glass history: the moment when American artists first looked to the Italian glass masters of the island of Murano, near Venice, for technical know-how. 

These vessels were not just a translation of Italian glass, they also inspired an entirely new direction for that historic craft language to flourish.

Chihuly and Marquis, among others, traveled to Venice in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the express purpose of learning new glassmaking skills, and then taught them to other American glass artists. Ideas, they had; what they felt they needed were the methods to execute them. We see evidence of these trips, which were not tourist jaunts of a couple of weeks but years-long experiences, in pieces such as Chihuly and James Carpenter’s cylindrical, flanged vessels with an interior ridge, which became known as the “RISD ring” (because the artists first taught it at the Rhode Island School of Design). A new Venetian influence is also evident in Marquis’ small murrine (mosaic glass) bowl, which uses pieces of fused red, white, and blue glass canes, and in Therman Statom’s ahistorical shapes that recall midcentury Italian designs, and which would become important elements in his later mixed-media assemblages. Inspired by Venetian glassmaking, yes, but traditional Venetian objects? No. These vessels were not just a translation of Italian glass, they also inspired an entirely new direction for that historic craft language to flourish.

Neither the 1976 neon sculpture by Chihuly and Carpenter nor the 1978 shard cylinders by Chihuly suggest any particular Venetian influence, however, they illustrate the direction in which American studio glass would develop in the late 1970s. Although an Italian style is not present in such works, Venetian glassmaking techniques enabled them to be made. It was not until the 1980s, when Venetian glass masters such as Lino Tagliapietra came to America to teach, that Italian glass styles would become so popular among American artists and collectors. This group of early objects preserves the original intent of American studio glass of the 1960s and 1970s, which was a vision for glass that was groundbreaking and uniquely American.

Tina Oldknow is the former senior curator of modern and contemporary glass at The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York.