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Blown Art Glass: From the First Simple Pieces to the Artwork of Today

Glassblowing was invented in the first century B.C. in the Syro-Palestinian region, and created quite a stir in the supply and demand of glass objects. Previously, making glass objects was a lot more labor intensive, and usually involved molding glass around a core. When people realized they could blow through a tube to inflate and shape the glass, glass vessels became much more readily available, and though the early glass items were usually plain, they led the way to blown art glass.

MURANO MAKES ITS MARK

Glass blowing really took off in 1291, when a huge glassmaking industry was established on the Venetian island of Murano. Glass working had been taking off in Venice, and officials decided to move the glass industry to the island both to prevent fires and to keep their amazing glass techniques a secret from the rest of the world.

It was around 1500 when Venetian glassmakers developed Cristallo glass, a clear glass that was made using potash from sea plants and quartz sand. Soon after this discovery, in 1575, Jacopo Verzelini brought the Murano glassmaking techniques to England, and was granted a patent by Elizabeth I to create glass works in the Venetian style.

In 1607, the settlers of the Jamestown colony brought glassblowing to America. At this time, glass was used mainly for just bottles and windows, American made glass was hard to distribute, most of it was being imported from Germany. Several Americans tried to distribute glass around their new country, mainly Caspar Wistar, Henry Stiegal, and then John Frederick Amelung. The first two had difficulties with their business, but Amelung managed to stay in business a bit longer than the others. In 1903, a man in Toledo Ohio named Michael Owens invented an automatic bottle-blowing machine.

GLASSWORKING FIRST SEEN IN THE ARTS

The 20th century was also the time when artists and designers became an important part of the glass houses. The first well-known glass artists were Emile Galle and Eugene Rouseau. Both of them became famous for their glass they showed at the Paris Exhibition in 1878. Galle was at the forefront of the Art Nouveau glass movement while Rouseau was heavily influenced by Japanese art. They did not do all of their glasswork, though; Maurice Marinot, who created large vessels in subtle colors, was the first artist to do all of his own glass blowing.

Thanks to the discovery of small kilns that could be used for glassblowing in the 1960’s, artists began to emerge on the scene, and out of this scene came new world-renowned glass artists like Dale Chihuly. This probably accounts for glassblowing being one of North America’s largest growing art forms.

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