Research
After earning his master's degree in ceramics, Littleton began teaching at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1951. In 1957 a university research grant allowed him to visit Europe, where he studied the influence of Islamic culture on contemporary Spanish pottery. However, he first stopped in Paris to visit Jean Sala, who had been recommended to Littleton as an artist who worked alone in glass.
After four and a half months of research in Spain, Littleton visited the site of his war-time service in Naples. He was surprised to find seven small glass factories there. On a later visit to the island of Murano, he visited more than fifty glass factories. He was fascinated by the little demonstration furnaces that some of the factories placed outside their walls. The furnaces would be staffed by a couple of the factory's glassblowers, who would perform their craft for tourists. Prior to this Littleton believed that glass could only be made in an industrial setting, by a team of workers. His Murano experience convinced him that a single artist could melt and work glass in a private studio.
Upon his return to his Verona, Wisconsin studio Littleton began melting small batches of glass in his ceramics kiln, using hand-thrown stoneware bowls as crucibles. As a result of these experiments, the American Craft Council asked him to chair a panel on glass at its Third National Conference in 1958. The panelists were glass artists and designers Michael and Frances Higgins and Earl McCutchen, who worked in laminated glass at the University of Georgia. Paul Perrot, director of the Corning Museum of Glass, was the fifth panelist. By the time the American Craft Council convened its fourth conference in 1961, Littleton not only presented a paper on his own work in glass but also exhibited a sculpture made of three faceted pieces of cullet that he had melted, formed and carved in the previous year. After the conference, Littleton began applying for grants to get his vision of a hot glass studio program off the ground.
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