Studio glass, 1960-2000

This book involved a significant amount of new research to ensure that the reader was presented with a balanced view of the role and nature of studio glass in Britain. Published sources to date have tended to privilege the view that glassmaking as an individual activity in the Western world during the late twentieth century owes its genesis primarily to the work of post Second World War pioneers active in the Western United States. I have here attempted to redress this view by examining the role of late 19th and early 20th century innovators who challenged the boundaries between amateur and professional practice in the European context. In contrast to the American scene in the 1960s, these individuals regarded their activity as an aspect of craft rather than avant-garde fine art activity. My research therefore required the analysis of a range of text-based records that have formerly been little examined in the context of the history of modern glass.