One of the questions that we are constantly asked is “When did we start blowing glass?” Well, you can answer that in multiple ways, two of which are “When did we personally start blowing glass” or “When did human’s fascination with glass begin?” We will save our personal story for another day.
Glass making began about 5000 years ago and glass blowing is much younger being only about 2000 years old. People first created small cast objects of glass in molds or by shaping it with simple tools somewhere before 2000 BC in Mesopotamia. A great place to get a more detailed view on the history of glass is on the Corning Museum of Glass – Timeline of Glass History==> http://timeline.cmog.org
Stone Age man used natural glass objects to fashion spear points and sharp cutting tools. The earliest known man-made glass objects were beads, which probably resulted as an accidental by product of other efforts, like metal-working. During the late Bronze Age in Egypt and Western Asia there was rapid growth in the technology of glass making including the making of colored glass. There is a rich history of glass as a luxury item and then glass making developed slightly differently in each of the worlds culture. By the 14th century the island of Murano was the center for luxury Italian glass making due to the abundance of pure quartz pebbles.
The American Studio Glass Movement began in the 1960’s when Harvey Littleton, a teaching ceramicist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, joined forces with the Toledo Museum of Art and held two historic glassblowing workshops. Dominick Labino, a glass research scientist also participated devising a small, inexpensive furnace to melt and work glass. After these workshops and learnings Littleton then started a glass program at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Some of the early students of this program (Dale Chihuly, Marvin Lipofsky and Fritz Dreisbach) became the innovative artists who led glass into its artistic forms of today.
Glass is literally involved in every facet of our lives today. Come with us and join in the world of glass. See it move, give it some color, give it some form. Come be a part of the Texas glass blowing movement by holding a party or event at our studio or joining in on one of our Glass Blowing Experiences, Workshops or Classes.
Enriching lives through artistic self-expression.
Three Dimensional Visions – Glass Blowing Houston
