Rev. 2002-01-01, 2005-09-13, 2009-06-18
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Harvey Littleton is considered one of the pioneers of the Modern Art Glass movement, being there at the beginning in the early 60's and training many of the people who drove the early years of activity. The primary purpose of this page is to offer copyright credit for a few images used elsewhere on my site which were taken from his book Glass Blowing, A Search for Form. 1971 (paperback Van Nostrand 1980 ISBN 0-442-24341-3) The images shown on this page are copyright Littleton Education Publishing and are used under fair use copyright law link The book is available in some public libraries and may be considered a basic reference for the movement. This piece is almost a signature piece for Littleton, although he did a lot of other, different stuff, shown in the book. The long clear glass shapes with colored cores, thick at each end were made in pieces like this and also draped across steel forms.
For people who have explored the beginnings of the studio glass movement the annealler control shown at the right and on the right in the picture below is almost like being shown a photo of the atomic bomb, Big Boy. The round black dial on the upper left is a Variac variable transformer, which mechanically changes the voltage supplied by making a sliding connection to the secondary coils of a transformer. Below it is an industrial timer as might be used on outdoor lighting or a water heater. A cam shape has been fastened to the timer and a disk to the Variac knob with a string to connect the two. As the timer turns, it pulls the Variac around lowering the voltage gradually and thus lowering the temperature in the annealler. Because of the cams shape, the rate of lowering speeds up as time passes.
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