Don't miss Glass! Glorious Glass! at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum through January 30

Opalescent Red Crown by Harvey K. Littleton is one of the many highlights of the show.

Harvey Littleton is considered the father of the studio glass movement in the United States. After serving with the U.S. Signal Corps during World War II, he studied industrial design at the University of Michigan . . . [and] the Cranbrook Academy of Art. . . . He accepted a teaching position in the Department of Art and Art Education at the University of Wisconsin, remaining on the faculty until 1977.

Littleton's initial specialty was ceramics, but by the late 1950s he was exploring the possibility of creating studio glass. . . . He developed equipment and a formula for melting glass at low temperatures, enabling him to blow glass in a studio rather than in the usual factory setting. This breakthrough led Littleton to play a major role in introducing glassblowing in college and university craft programs. His own program at the University of Wisconsin fostered the talents of a generation of glass artists, including Date Chihuly and Fritz Dreisbach.

In 1983 Littleton was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Craft Council. He is the author of Glassblowing: A Search for Form, published in 1971.

Source: Kenneth R. Trapp and Howard Risatti. Skilled Work: American Craft in the Renwick Gallery. (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998).

Pictured: Harvey K. Littleton (born 1922), Opalescent Red Crown,1983, glass, barium, potash, Kugler, 27 3/4 x 29 1/2 x 24 3/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase with funds donated by Mr. and Mrs. R. Philip Hanes, Jr., Victor Cross, Joseph Davenport, Jr., John Hauberg, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Judelson, Mr. Samuel Johnson, and Edward Elson.