Harvey Littleton - Glass at The University of Wisconsin

Glass At The University of Wisconsin

In the summer of 1962 Littleton once again traveled to Europe, this time to research how glass was taught in universities there. He found nothing that he could bring back to the U.S. to help him educate art students at the University of Wisconsin. At that time, European glass programs were geared solely toward industrial production. Students were not taught hands-on techniques with the material; the craft of working with hot glass was still taught at the factories, under the apprenticeship system. What Littleton did find in Europe was a kindred spirit in glass art, the German Erwin Eisch, who is recognized today as a founder of European studio glass. Eisch had set up a small work area in his family’s glass factory in Frauenau for the production of his own glass art. Trained as a fine artist in the academies of Germany, he was largely self-taught as a glass blower and at the time produced his work with the help of the factory’s craftsmen.

Through the fall 1962 and spring 1963 semesters, Littleton taught glass in a garage at his Verona farm to six students under an independent study program. By the following year he had secured University of Wisconsin funding to rent and equip an off-campus glass department in Madison. Through the University’s glass program, Littleton would train many prominent glass artists, including Bill Boysen, Dale Chihuly, Marvin Lipofsky, Fritz Dreisbach, Sam Herman, Tom McGlauchlin, Christopher Ries and Michael Taylor.

With the launching of the first college glass department Littleton said that he "...became a kind of evangelist for the medium." He gave lectures at university art departments throughout the midwest and northeast United States about the potential of glass as a medium for the studio artist. Littleton served as the chairman of the University of Wisconsin art department from 1964–1967 and from 1969–1971. He retired from teaching in 1976, and in 1977 was named professor emeritus. It was around this time that Littleton, in addition to his work in glass, began to develop the technique of vitreography — printmaking using glass plates.