Habatat

First one-man exhibition in the United States

First one-man exhibition in the United States

First solo exhibition in the United States

First solo exhibition, as Stankard recounts in his autobiography, No Green Berries or Leaves: The Creative Journey of an Artist in Glass (2007)

First solo exhibition in the United States

First exhibition in the United States

First solo exhibitions in the United States

First one-man exhibition, at Habatat Michigan

First exhibition of his work, at Habatat Florida

The first solo show by an American glass artist at the Museo del Vidrio, Monterrey

First exhibition in the United States

Ruth Snyderman opened the Works Gallery in 1965 with a friend; Rick Snyderman joined her in the early 1970s. Their second space, The Snyderman Gallery (early 1980s), showed studio furniture and glass, and the two later merged in Old City. For 52 years the galleries helped build Philadelphia’s craft community before closing their doors in July 2017.

Leo and Ruth Kaplan began selling paperweights in 1966 and opened Leo Kaplan Ltd in 1969, specializing in ceramics, glass and paperweights. Leo Kaplan, the leading authority on antique French and American paperweights and a Fellow of the Corning Museum of Glass (1987), opened Leo Kaplan Modern in 2002 to represent contemporary glass.

Founded in 1971 by Ferdinand Hampson with Linda and Thomas Boone; the first gallery in the United States devoted entirely to glass, and home of the International Glass Invitational since 1972. Later galleries followed in Florida and, in 1987, Chicago. More above.

Douglas and Michael Heller began representing glass artists in 1973, among them John Nygren, Mark Peiser, Roland Jahn and James Lundberg, and helped establish the American market for contemporary glass. The gallery has represented Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová since 1980, and works it has shown have entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. It marked its 50th anniversary in 2023 and is now on Tenth Avenue beside the High Line.

Ray Ahlgren, Dan Schwoerer and Boyce Lundstrom founded Bullseye Glass in 1974 to solve the technical problems of their own work; its compatible glass carried kiln-forming around the world. The gallery grew out of the factory’s research, so that work made in Portland could be seen there rather than only in New York, Los Angeles or Zurich. Its 1998 residency launched Giles Bettison, Claudia Borella, Mel George and Jessica Loughlin. Relaunched in 2015 as Bullseye Projects, it runs the biennial Tg: Transitions in Kiln-Glass and tours exhibitions with museums.

Barry Friedman opened his gallery beside his Madison Avenue apartment after 1975 and stood apart for embracing glass as part of what he called contemporary decorative art, including Czech glass, with a solo exhibition of František Vizner in 2008. In 2007 he co-founded Friedman Benda with Marc Benda.

William Traver turned his interior design shop into a gallery in 1977 at the urging of the artists he represented. Traver mounted the first Pilchuck Glass School exhibition and introduced Americans to Lino Tagliapietra. In 2003 he opened a second gallery and Vetri International Glass in Tacoma. His daughter Sarah Traver now runs the gallery, which moved to the Seattle waterfront in 2025 after 32 years on Union Street.

Kenn and Chandra Holsten opened the gallery on June 10, 1978, as one of the first American galleries to show contemporary art glass. A second gallery on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach (1980–90) drew national attention with a Harvey Littleton exhibition in 1981 and a major Dale Chihuly exhibition in 1982. After 31 years Holsten sold the Stockbridge gallery and continues online.

Founded by Elaine Horwitch in 1976; Arlene LewAllen joined in 1994 and became sole owner in 1997. The gallery has represented contemporary glass for nearly four decades, and in 2024 mounted Glassen Wonders, its largest glass exhibition.

The first gallery devoted to glass in Los Angeles, directed by Ruth Summers, and active into the 1990s.

Jim Schantz and Kim Saul, both part of Holsten Galleries from its early years, took over the Stockbridge gallery in 2009, continuing one of the oldest glass programs in New England with artists such as Lino Tagliapietra, Dan Dailey and James Carpenter.

Opened by Sandra Ainsley in 1984; in 1989 the gallery brought Dale Chihuly to Canada for the first time, and Ainsley has long been a leading Canadian dealer of contemporary glass.

Tom Riley opened Riley Hawk in Columbus for his daughter and son-in-law, Sherrie and Tom Hawk, to run; Sherrie Riley Hawk’s first gallery opened in the Short North in 1986. Riley Hawk became one of the nation’s premier galleries for glass, and the Rileys opened further galleries in Cleveland and Washington. Today Tom Hawk runs Hawk Galleries in Columbus, which represents artists such as Lino Tagliapietra and William Morris.

Habatat opened its third gallery in Chicago in 1987, after taking part in the Chicago New Art Forms Exposition the year before. The Chicago gallery later became the Echt Gallery, run by Karen Echt (per Corey Hampson).

Founded by Barbara Shaw and now run by her grandson Jay Shaw, who turned the gallery toward glass; it represents a group of established glass artists on Fifth Avenue South.

Sandy Sardella opened Pismo in 1990, when local artists told her Denver could not support a glass gallery; within two years it was almost entirely glass. Her all-glass gallery on Fillmore Street opened in 1995, with later galleries in Vail, Beaver Creek and Aspen, showing Lino Tagliapietra, Dale Chihuly and Dante Marioni. Raven Gallery later took over one of Pismo’s spaces (per Corey Hampson).

Stanisław Borowski founded the studio with his sons Paweł and Wiktor in 1990, moving it from Germany to Poland in 1992; Paweł leads the studio and Wiktor manages the business and its galleries. Habatat gave the family its first United States exhibition in 2005. Wiktor and his wife run Continuum Gallery (per Corey Hampson).

David and Leisa Austin founded Imago in 1991 and opened its Palm Desert building in 1999, with a separate space for studio glass; they represented Dale Chihuly from their first gallery. Austin Art Projects continues their glass program with Hohmann Fine Art in Palm Desert, showing Lino Tagliapietra, Dante Marioni and John Kiley.

Founded in Bergamo as D’Arte & Divetro, the gallery opened in Venice in 1998 and took its owner’s name in 2004; from Palazzo Treves near San Marco it shows international artists and designers working in glass and represents the international studio glass movement.

Bonnie Marx invited Ken Saunders to form Marx-Saunders Gallery in 1994, focused on studio glass; as Ken Saunders Gallery it shows sculptural work in glass and moved to Chicago’s West Town in 2020.

A West Coast home for European glass; the Hungarian artist Margit M. Tóth showed there from 1998 to 2003.

Duane Reed, drawn to the seriousness of the studio glass movement, opened his gallery in 1994 with an emphasis on glass and ceramic sculpture, including Marvin Lipofsky’s late work.

Run by Maurine Littleton, Harvey Littleton’s daughter, and specializing in glass; in 2012 it mounted an exhibition for the 50th anniversary of the American Studio Glass Movement.

Co-founded by Maureen Cahill, who founded the glass department at Sydney College of the Arts and directed the gallery; Australia’s showcase for studio glass, it took Australian work to the Chicago International New Art Forms Exposition in 1993. From Noris Ioannou, Australian Studio Glass (1995).

Bratislava gallery that published Slovak Contemporary Glass (2008), edited by Katarína Beňová with a foreword by Dan Klein: a history of the glass department at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, profiles of twenty-four Slovak glass artists and the academy’s list of graduates.

Adriano Berengo opened his studio on Murano to painters, sculptors, designers and architects who had never worked in glass, pairing them with Murano’s masters; his Glasstress exhibitions, from 2009, brought glass to the contemporary art world. See the Berengo line on the Glass Family Tree©.

Among the first handful of galleries to open in SoHo, in 1972, showing painting, sculpture, drawing and photography; it moved to Chelsea in 2008. Nancy Hoffman represented Nicolas Africano, who worked in glass early on, and has shown his cast-glass figures, including Themes and Variations (2026).

A contemporary art gallery in Chelsea that gave glass artists solo shows alongside painters and sculptors, among them Beth Lipman (Faded Bloom, 2012; Precarious Possessions, 2013; Distill, 2016) and the stained-glass artist Judith Schaechter (Super/Natural, 2026).

One of the world’s leading contemporary art galleries, whose program has included glass by Fred Wilson, Maya Lin and Kiki Smith: Wilson’s Venice Suite (2012), the group exhibition GLASS (2016), and Wilson’s Chandeliers (2019), five Murano glass chandeliers that opened Pace’s new New York headquarters, followed by Glass Works 2009–2018 in Seoul.

The glass artist Duncan McClellan opened his gallery in 2010 in a former packing warehouse in an industrial part of St. Petersburg, added a hot shop, and through the DMG School Project brings students to glass; it is part of Tampa Bay’s “Glass Coast.”

Run by Marta Juhász and Robin Quinta, with a large glass program; in 2016 it mounted a Hungarian Glass Exhibition with László Lukácsi and Péter Borkovics.

Founded by Jordan Ahlers after eighteen years at Blue Spiral 1, with an emphasis on material-based work, above all studio glass; its 2018 Summer of Glass exhibitions accompanied the Chihuly exhibition at Biltmore.

In the early 1960s Frank H. Wheaton Jr., of the Wheaton glass family, visited the Corning Museum of Glass and noticed how much of its glass had been made in southern New Jersey. He resolved to show glass where it was made, and founded Wheaton Village in 1968; its first buildings opened to the public in 1970, around what is now the Museum of American Glass. In 1983 the Creative Glass Center of America began awarding working fellowships to artists from around the world. Two years later came GlassWeekend: from 1985, every other June, the leading glass artists, collectors, galleries and museum curators gathered in Millville for exhibitions, demonstrations, lectures and dinners, with the proceeds supporting the fellowships. It became the place where collectors met the artists and galleries they would follow for years. Habatat took part, among many galleries.

Mark Lyman began the Chicago New Art Forms Exposition in the mid-1980s; Habatat exhibited there in 1986 and opened a Chicago gallery the next year. In 1994 Lyman relaunched the fair as SOFA, Sculpture Objects & Functional Art, at the Sheraton Chicago, with 58 exhibitors and 14,000 visitors; in 1995 it moved to Navy Pier, where it ran each November for decades, and a New York edition followed in the late 1990s. Glass was at its center. Every fall the leading glass galleries from North America, Europe, Australia and Asia set up side by side, museums brought their collector groups, artists gave talks, and Chicago became, for a long weekend, the capital of the market for glass and craft. Lyman led SOFA as founding director of both fairs; Urban Expositions acquired SOFA Chicago in 2013.

The son of a Corning Incorporated glassblower, Warmus studied art criticism and philosophy at the University of Chicago and became curator of modern glass at the Corning Museum of Glass in 1978. He was the founding editor of the museum’s annual New Glass Review, edited Glass magazine (1986–89), served as executive secretary of the Glass Art Society and taught at Pilchuck. His dozen-plus books include studies of Tiffany, Lalique, Gallé and Dale Chihuly, Fire and Form: The Art of Contemporary Glass and Transparencies: Contemporary Art and a History of Glass (2013). A Fellow of the Corning Museum, he has been writing about glass for nearly fifty years; his archive is at Corning’s Rakow Library.

After nearly two decades at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Oldknow became curator of modern glass at the Corning Museum of Glass in 2000 and senior curator in 2014, editing New Glass Review and planning the collection for Corning’s Contemporary Art + Design Wing. Her books include Pilchuck: A Glass School (1996), Voices of Contemporary Glass: The Heineman Collection (2009), Collecting Contemporary Glass (2014) and studies of Richard Marquis and Dante Marioni. Since retiring from Corning in 2015 she has curated independently, with more than 30 exhibitions and over 100 books, articles and essays on glass.

A glass BFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Littleton’s program, with an MA from the Bard Graduate Center (2012), Silbert worked as Mark Peiser’s studio curator before succeeding Tina Oldknow at Corning in 2016 as curator of modern and contemporary, later postwar and contemporary, glass (2016–23). She redesigned New Glass Review and organized New Glass Now (2019), which traveled to the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery. She is now an independent curator and writer and was named Penland’s Andrew Glasgow resident.

Director of twentieth-century decorative arts at Christie’s in London (1984–95) and a prolific author, whose books include Glass: A Contemporary Art (1989) and Artists in Glass: Late Twentieth Century Masters in Glass (2001). With his partner Alan J. Poole he helped found North Lands Creative Glass, the summer school in Lybster, Scotland, and was its founding director.

Author, lecturer and painter, and one of the first serious critics of studio glass. Best known for The Encyclopedia of Glass Paperweights (1969) and Glass Paperweights: An Old Craft Revived (1975), he published more than eighty essays and reviews on contemporary glass; his papers are at the Archives of American Art, and the Bard Graduate Center’s Voices in Studio Glass History presents his writings.

Curator of twentieth-century glass at the Corning Museum of Glass for thirteen years, author of Contemporary Glass: A World Survey from The Corning Museum of Glass (Abrams), past president and honorary lifetime member of the Glass Art Society and former editor of its journal; in 1998 she went to the Czech Republic as a Fulbright Senior Scholar.

First director of the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, from its opening in the early 1970s to 1986, overseeing 113 exhibitions that brought craft, glass among it, into a national museum. He wrote the first published history of Pilchuck, Clearly Art: Pilchuck’s Glass Legacy (1992), with a touring exhibition, and later worked as an independent curator and lecturer.

Director of the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, later the American Craft Museum and now the Museum of Arts and Design, from 1963 to 1987, presenting more than 200 exhibitions that made the case for craft media, glass among them, as art.

Editor of New Work magazine in the 1980s and a longtime writer on contemporary glass for international publications, with many interviews of glass artists, as well as a curator in museums and galleries.

Director of the Center for Glass and curator of modern and contemporary glass at the Toledo Museum of Art; she organized Contemporary Crafts and the Saxe Collection, which toured to the Saint Louis Art Museum, Newport Harbor and the Renwick, and curated Look What Harvey Did at the Chazen Museum of Art.

Joined the Corning Museum of Glass in 1965 and was its curator of American glass from 1978 to 2013, acquiring thousands of objects. Her books include American and European Pressed Glass in the Corning Museum of Glass (1981), White House Glassware (1989), Masterpieces of American Glass (1990, with Susanne Frantz) and The American Cut Glass Industry: T. G. Hawkes and His Competitors (1996).

Independent critic and curator who has reviewed Northwest and national artists for decades, including glass exhibitions in Seattle and Tacoma, and has written monographs on Dale Chihuly among others.

A reviewer for Glass magazine who curated the traveling exhibition Seattle Exchange (1982).

Founded London Glassblowing on the Thames at Rotherhithe in 1976, moving to Bermondsey in 2009; author of Glass Art (1996) and Past and Present: Peter Layton and London Glassblowing.

Led the glass department at the University of Wolverhampton for four decades; his Techniques of Kiln-formed Glass (1997) and Contemporary Kiln-Formed Glass: A World Survey (2010) are standard texts on kiln-forming.

Editor in chief of the American Craft Council’s American Craft magazine from 2010 to 2018, a national voice for craft media, glass among them; her features include the magazine’s “40 Under 40” (2012). Earlier she led a redesign of the Minneapolis Star Tribune (2005) and served as a Pulitzer Prize juror in photography (2006).

Author of American Studio Glass, 1960–1990, the standard survey of the movement’s first three decades, whose account of the early Habatat Invitationals is quoted on this site.

Author of Harvey K. Littleton: A Life in Glass (2011), the biography behind much of the Littleton line on the Glass Family Tree©.

Seattle curator of Links: Australian Glass and the Pacific Northwest (Museum of Glass, Tacoma, 2013), which traced the teachers and residencies linking Canberra and the Northwest.

Author of Women Working in Glass (2003), profiling women in the field decade by decade; a founding source for this site’s Women of Glass.

Author of Czech Glass, the standard history of Czech studio glass and its schools, published by the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, and of Bohemian Glass: The Great Masters (Skira); she wrote the text for Verres de Bohême 1400–1989 (Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 1989), České sklo (Prague, 2002) and České a slovenské sklo v exilu (Moravian Gallery, Brno, 2007). The Czech teaching lines on the Glass Family Tree© follow her books.

Glass specialist and curator at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague who selected Czech glass for the world exhibitions and the Milan Triennales of the 1950s and 1960s, and wrote Glass in Czechoslovakia (1958) and a series on a thousand years of glassmaking in Slovakia in Glass Review (1974).

Czech critic of glass and design whose writing, including her review of the exhibition of Libenský’s graduates, defined how his teaching was understood; she wrote for Artistes verriers de Tchécoslovaquie (Brussels, 1988).

Author of The Legend of Bohemian Glass: A Thousand Years of Glassmaking in the Heart of Europe (Tigris, Zlín, 2003) and of studies of the engraver Jozef Soukup and his pupils.

Writer on Libenský and Brychtová, whose The Magic of Imagination (2013) records their glass in architecture; he has taught glass history at Brno University of Technology.

Organized the 1984 exhibition Meeting at the château of Telč and wrote Metamorfózy skla (Moravian Gallery, 1972).

Author of Australian Studio Glass: The Movement, Its Makers and Their Art (Craftsman House, 1995), built on interviews with the first generation and their biographies, as well as The Culture Brokers (1989) and Craft in Society (1992). The Australian lines on the Glass Family Tree© draw on it.

Author of Stained Glass in Australia (Oxford University Press, 1984) and of “Studio Glass Australia: The First Decade of Exhibitions” (Craft Australia, 1988), the record of Australian glass shows from 1974 to 1984.

Author of The Crafts Movement in Australia: A History (New South Wales University Press, 1992), with its chronology of the glass movement.

Her series of essays “The Glass Narrative” (Crafts NSW, 1991) examined how the story of Australian studio glass had been told.

Editor of Slovak Contemporary Glass (Gallery NOVA, 2008), with a foreword by Dan Klein: profiles of twenty-four Slovak glass artists and the Bratislava academy’s list of graduates; its main text is by Sabina Jankovičová.

Author of Contemporary Glass Sculpture in Slovakia (Bratislava, 1989) and “Mystery of Discovered Space: Contemporary Slovak Glass” (Neues Glas, 1998).

Wrote on Slovak glass for the Slovak National Gallery, including Současné slovenské sklo (1991), and “History and Permanent Glass-making in Slovakia” (Glass Review, 1987).

Author of Le verre slovaque (1995) and of the essay on Cigler’s “school of thinking” in the 2003 catalogue of Václav Cigler and the graduates of his Bratislava department.

Glass curator at the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf and long a writer for Neues Glas, cited in both the Czech and the Australian histories.

Habatat’s co-founder, who has organized more than 125 exhibitions and published or supported more than 50 catalogs, from Glass: State of the Art (1984) to Studio Glass in America: A 50-Year Journey (2012). More below.

Habatat presented his solo exhibition We Are Blown Away, August–November 2022. Exhibition

The UK hot-sculptor named “Best in Glass” in 2021. At Habatat

Seattle artist working in glass on grief, loss and mortality. At Habatat

Blown and hot-sculpted glass miniatures. At Habatat

Glass artist from the series, represented by Habatat.

Represented by Habatat; in the International since the 37th, with a 2013 Award of Excellence. Resume

Shown at Habatat in StreetKraft, 2018.

Blew the reliquary for The Importance of Allies, with Tim Tate, Joyce Scott and Therman Statom.