Craft: An American History

by Glenn Adamson

Eventually there were enough galleries that studio craft got its very own art fair, SOFA (Sculpture Objects Functional Art), which began operating out of a Chicago hotel in 1993 and then moved to the larger space of the city’s Navy Pier. From its earliest years, the main attraction at the SOFA fair was blown glass. It was the craft medium that enjoyed the greatest commercial success, the one that was best suited to the spectacle culture of the 1980s and that had the highest price points. The challenge and expense of hot glass are considerable, partly due to the costs of constructing and continuously operating a furnace. After 1964, though, when a first gathering for studio glass artists was held in Toledo, Ohio, knowledge and capacity expanded quickly. The remnants of a once-extensive American industry—companies such as Libbey in Toledo, Blenko in West Virginia, and Corning in upstate New York—were one important source of support. Expertise was also imported by artisans from Italy and Czechoslovakia, who generously overlooked long-standing traditions of trade secrecy. By the 1980s, glass had matured into a field with strong international connections and internal camaraderie. For those without their own studios, accessible “hot shops” (like UrbanGlass, in Brooklyn) made it possible to create work in a supportive group context. Glassblowing at such sites is uniquely performative, requiring multiple hands working in unison, with the added drama of heat, risk, and speed. This ...