Dominick Labino

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This piece called "Break-Through Gold Veilings," part of Labino's Emergence Series, was in the 1980 Renwick Gallery exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, which showcased his work. (Private collection.)

Dominick Labino (1910-1987) born in Fairmount City, Pennsylvania

Internationally-known artist, technologist, inventor, and master craftsman in glass.

Often referred to as the real Father of the Studio Glass Movement. His glass works are in the permanent collections of more than 70 museums throughout the world. Labino held over 60 glass-oriented patents in the United States, and hundreds more in other countries.

Trained at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, he attended the Toledo Museum of Art School of Design.

Labino began his professional career at Owens-Illinois, Inc., a glass manufacturing plant in Clairton, Ohio. He then moved on to Toledo where he spent the next 30 years with Johns-Manville Fiber Glass Corporation. Upon retirement in 1965 he was vice president and director of research. Labino continued to serve as a research consultant until 1975.

During 1962, Labino joined with Harvey Littleton, then a ceramics instructor at the Toledo Museum of Art, to set up the first glass seminar at the museum. They began experimenting with molten glass as a workable medium for the artist.

Littleton would go on to found the first fine art glass program at the University of Wisconsin at Madison; another glass pioneer, Marvin Lipofsky, founded the second university-level glass program at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964; and Dale Chihuly initiated the glass program at the Rhode Island School of Design that same year.

It was in 1963 that Labino set up a studio on his large farm near Grand Rapids, Ohio. He designed glass-blowing and finishing tools; built his own furnaces and annealing ovens; and began freehand blowing with molten glass. Through his research and development of new technologies, like the fusing of colors, he provided artists with the methods and tools to create glass as art in their own studios, no longer making it necessary to involve glass factories in their creative process.

Among the many innovative advances Labino developed were the processes and machines used in forming glass fibers. Several of these glass fiber developments were employed to insulate against extreme temperatures in the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft.

His book Visual Art in Glass was published in 1968. And Labino received the Steuben Phoenix Award in 1977 for his contributions to the production of glass; recognized as the most prestigious honor in the industry.

Interesting note: In the June 11, 1970 edition of The Washington Star (Washington, D.C.), Edith Gaines, the then editor of Antiques Magazine, was quoted as having said: "I would recommend buying the glass of Dominick Labino even above Louis Comfort Tiffany!"

Labino's obituary appeared in The New York Times, January 13, 1987.

Some of the major national and international museums which display Dominick Labino's work include: Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, IL; Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; Fowler Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; England Kuntsmuseum, Dusseldorf, Germany; National Glass Museum, Leerdam, Holland; Pilkington Glass Museum, England; Museum fur Kunsst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Germany

One-man shows include Dominick Labino: A Retrospective Exhibition, 1964-1969 at the Corning Museum; Dominick Labino: A Decade of Glass Craftsmanship, 1964-1974, which opened at the Pilkington Glass Museum traveling to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Toledo Museum of Art. In 1989 The Toledo Museum of Art presented Glass by Dominick Labino.