Art glass

Art glass usually refers to the creation of glass objects by individual artists working alone or with a few assistants using small furnaces of a few hundred pounds of glass. This movement began in the early 1960s and has continued to flourish through the end of the century. The main objective of these glass pieces is no longer primarily utilitarian; instead, they are intended to make a sculptural or decorative statement. Market value can vary from a few hundred to tens of thousands of U.S. dollars or more. One of the foremost designers of modern art glass is Dale Chihuly who uses many of the best independent glass workers to create his large and colorful works.

Up until the early 1960s, "art glass" would have referred to all glass made solely for decorative use, usually by teams of factory workers, taking glass from furnaces with a thousand or more pounds of glass. This form of art glass, of which Tiffany and Steuben Glass in the US, Gallé in France and Hoya Crystal in Japan and Kosta Boda and Orrefors in Sweden are perhaps the best known, grew out of the factory system in which all glass objects were hand or mold blown by teams of 4 or more men. These teams of factory workers considered to be part of the height of the old art glass movement were being phased out and replaced by mechanical bottle blowing and window glass by the end of the 19th century. In the factory system, every member of the team does the same job repeatedly turning out dozens or hundreds of the same item in a day's work.

In an art glass studio, you don't find the same type of mass production items. Instead, the pieces worked (goblets, vases, pitchers, art marbles etc.) show more hand worked variation than was traditionally allowed in the typical factory work environment. Each piece tends to show some of the lead glass worker's creativity, the gaffer. While studio glass workers often work with smaller production pieces, they also try to create larger individual pieces which might be the equivalent of a masterpiece in the journeyman system of guild and factory work.