Vitreography
Encyclopedia
Vitreography is a fine art printmaking technique that uses a 3/8 in float glass
matrix instead of the traditional matrices of metal, wood or stone. A print created using the technique is called a vitreograph. Unlike a monotype, in which ink is painted onto a smooth glass plate and transferred to paper to produce a unique work, the vitreograph technique involves fixing the imagery in, or on, the glass plate. This allows the production of an edition
of prints.
of Janus Press, intaglio vitreographs also have an advantage over metal in that the glass plate wipes cleanly in non-image areas, allowing bright white to coincide with “black that is velvety as a mezzotint
” in the finished print.
Another advantage of vitreograph printmaking is its ability to withstand the pressure of the printing press with no discernible breakdown of the imagery, even after numerous runs. Printmaker Ken Kerslake
wrote, “The glass plate will last indefinitely because, unlike [one of] copper or zinc, it will always return to its original configuration no matter how much pressure is applied.” A disadvantage to this is that unwanted lines or marks on the glass plate cannot be burnished out, as they can on a zinc or copper plate.
The transparency of the glass plate can be used to advantage, in that the plate may be placed over a preliminary drawing on paper to guide the artist in creating a drawing on the plate. This is done by placing the drawing face down on a light table (to allow for the reversal of the image in printing) and placing the vitreograph plate on top of it.
Although glass is unaffected by compression in the printing press, it will break under tension. For that reason, vitreographs are always printed on an etching press, whose rigid bed will support the glass plate firmly. In addition, the press bed must be level and working conditions in the print shop immaculate. A particle of grit or dirt between press bed and the plate will create a tension point that will cause the glass to crack when pressure is applied.
was a tenured professor of art at the University of Wisconsin in Madison when, in June 1974, he taught a workshop in cold-working techniques for glass artists. To cold-work glass is to shape or sculpt cold (as opposed to hot or molten) glass, or to produce texture or decoration on its surface. Cold-working is done by carving, grinding or engraving glass with various tools, or by selectively blasting it with abrasives. As a result of experimenting with various resists for sandblasting, Littleton became intrigued by the possibility of printmaking from glass. He asked his colleague at the University of Wisconsin, printmaker Warrington Colescott
, to ink five of the sandblasted plates from the workshop and print them onto paper in his etching press. The first plate broke under pressure, but after making some adjustments to the press, the rest of the glass plates printed “like dreamboats,” Colescott said. Editions printed from the plates looked promising, and Littleton was awarded a research grant from the University of Wisconsin to continue the development of printing from glass.
In 1976 Littleton retired from teaching and moved to Spruce Pine, North Carolina, where he set up a glass studio, reserving space for an etching press on which he continued to make vitreograph prints. A few years later, at the end of 1981, he hired a woodcut
artist, Sandy Willcox, to work as a part-time printer. He encouraged her and his colleagues in glass art, including Ken Carder, Billy Bernstein, Erwin Eisch and Ann Wolff (formerly Wärff), to try their hands at vitreography.
In 1982 Littleton invited curator Jane Kessler of the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina to see the prints that were being created at Littleton Studios. Kessler was impressed by the new technique, and recommended that experienced painters and printmakers be invited to the studio to explore the medium. A grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts made it possible for three painters, Walter Darby Bannard
, Ed Blackburn and Hollis Sigler
to collaborate with two master printers, Paul Maguire of Flatrock Press and June Lambla, who had apprenticed at Crown Point Press, in the creation of prints at Littleton Studios. By this time Littleton had constructed a fully equipped printmaking studio that was separate from his glassblowing shop. Sigler visited Littleton Studios in 1985 and produced five prints; Blackburn produced five prints in 1986 and Bannard created seven prints in 1987. The project led to an exhibition at the Mint Museum in 1987 that included a catalog detailing these and other artists’ research in glass plate printmaking. Littleton continued to invite painters, printmakers, potters and glass artists to the studio to fully develop the possibilities of vitreography. Littleton Studios has published vitreograph print editions by 110 artists.
process, in which line and tone are carved, engraved or etched into the glass plate’s surface. Printing an intaglio plate involves forcing ink into the grooves and pits, and then wiping the plate’s surface with tarlatan to remove excess ink. The image is transferred to dampened paper under pressure in an etching press.
Color intaglio prints are achieved by processing separate plates, each carrying one or more colors in proportion to the effect desired in the print. The plates are printed in succession onto paper, each carrying color and imagery that, in register with the others, combine to form the finished print.
Tools used to make marks in the glass include diamond point scribers, a flexible shaft power tool with a diamond bit and a sandblaster. Littleton Studios printer Sandy Willcox and her husband David Lewis, a painter, are credited with discovering that white lithograph ink is a versatile resist for sandblasting intaglio glass plates. They found that the viscous white ink, applied to the plate freely with a brush or evenly with a roller, can be drawn into by removing ink with wooden styluses, needles, or paintbrushes. When the drawing is complete, the plate is taken to the sandblasting booth wet. There, the initial onslaught of sand sticks to those areas of the image where ink remains (forming an even more resistant barrier) while etching those parts of the glass revealed by the hand of the artist. After the plate is cleaned of ink, the parts of the plate that received the blast can be seen to have minute pits that hold ink; the areas that were protected by the white litho ink remain smooth and are wiped clean before printing. Contact paper and tape are also used on the plates as a sandblasting resist; those materials create imagery with a hard-edged, stencil effect. Diluted hydrofluoric acid
can be brushed onto the plate to create areas of very delicate tone.
A second method of creating imagery on the vitreograph plate is waterless lithography (sometimes called “siligraphy”). The process was originally developed by 3M Company for commercial printing in the late 1960s; it was purchased and subsequently refined by Toray Industries of Japan. The commercial process is a type of offset printing
that uses photo-sensitized silicone rubber plates. The waterless lithography process employed in fine art printmaking has been credited to Nik Semenoff, who developed it for use on metal plates.
Donald Furst demonstrated his adaptation of the silicone method to glass plate printmaking in June, 1995, and the Littleton Studios adopted his process for their work with glass plate lithography. The image is drawn onto a ground glass matrix with water-soluble art materials, over which is applied a film of common caulking silicone
thinned with synthetic turpentine. Master printer Mark Mahaffey has found that frosted Mylar can be used as a printing matrix as well as 3/8” float glass to create a vitreograph using waterless lithography.
After the silicone layer cures, the original drawing is gently washed from the plate with water, dried, and inked with a roller. The silicone layer protects the non-printing areas of the image while allowing open areas (those free of silicone) to accept ink. Like intaglio vitreographs, waterless lithographs on glass plates are transferred to paper in an etching press.
In 1998 Littleton invited three artists, Bonnie Pierce Lhotka, Karin Schminke and Dorothy Simpson Krause (collectively known as the Digital Atelier), to investigate combining digital imagery with vitreography processes. The artists printed digital images onto clear transfer film using a large format inkjet printer, transferring them to paper in the etching press, along with glass plate imagery processed in the intaglio and/or siligraph techniques.
, Erwin Eisch
, Shane Fero, Stanislav Libenský, Paul Stankard
, Therman Statom
, Sybren Valkema and Ann Wolff. Littleton also invited painters, sculptors and printmakers to Littleton Studios to explore the possibilities and limitations of vitreography. Painters Walter Darby Bannard
, Louisa Chase, Herb Jackson
, Mildred Thompson
, Emilio Vedova
and John Wilde
; potters Cynthia Bringle and John Glick, sculptors Sergei Isupov
and Italo Scanga
and printmakers Glen Alps
, Ken Kerslake
, Karen Kunc, Judith O’Rourke and Dan Welden are a few of the artists whose work has been published by the studio.
The first group exhibition of the prints to include works by painters and printmakers, as well as glass artists, was at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina in 1986. Seventeen artists were represented in the exhibition, all of whom had created their prints at Littleton Studios.
The Mint Museum mounted another group exhibition in 1987 titled Luminous Impressions: Prints from Glass Plates. It featured vitreographs by nineteen artists and included prints by glass artist Dale Chihuly
and California printmaker Connor Everts. Everts is credited with coining the term “vitreography” to describe printmaking from glass plates. Another early group exhibition took place in 1988 at the Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg in Coburg, Germany. Titled "Prints from Glass Plates - Vitreographs," the show featured works by Americans and two Germans: Erwin Eisch and Ann Wolff.
Other notable group exhibitions include Vitreographs: Collaborative Works from the Littleton Studio which was exhibited at The Hunter Museum of American Art
in Chattanooga, Tennessee and The University Gallery at The University of Florida at Gainesville (both in 1993); “Vitreographs” at The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon in 1997 and “Vitreographs: Collaborative Works from Littleton Studio” at the Center for the Arts in Vero Beach, Florida in 1998.
Recent group exhibitions include Reflections on a Legacy: Vitreographs from Littleton Studios at Appalachian State University
in Boone, North Carolina (2006) and Harvey K. Littleton + Friends: A Legacy of Transforming Object, Image & Idea, at Western Carolina University
in Cullowhee, North Carolina (2006–07). The latter was an exhibition of the work of 75 artworks by seventeen artists, and included vitreographs alongside works in glass, clay, ceramic, painting and book art. Curator Martin DeWitt wrote in the catalog accompanying the exhibition that “Not only is Littleton credited to be the father of the contemporary studio glass movement in the United States…he is also inventor and progenitor of the versatile and unique vitreographic printmaking process.”
, Cincinnati, Ohio; The Corning Museum of Glass
, Corning, New York; Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida; Milwaukee Art Museum
, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida; Portland Art Museum
, Portland, Oregon; Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Smithsonian American Art Museum
, Washington, DC; Tweed Museum of Art
, Duluth, Minnesota and the Vero Beach Museum of Art
, Vero Beach, Florida. The Fine Art Museum of Western Carolina University holds an archive of 723 vitreograph editions published at Littleton Studios.
Float glass
Float glass is a sheet of glass made by floating molten glass on a bed of molten metal, typically tin, although lead and various low melting point alloys were used in the past. This method gives the sheet uniform thickness and very flat surfaces. Modern windows are made from float glass...
matrix instead of the traditional matrices of metal, wood or stone. A print created using the technique is called a vitreograph. Unlike a monotype, in which ink is painted onto a smooth glass plate and transferred to paper to produce a unique work, the vitreograph technique involves fixing the imagery in, or on, the glass plate. This allows the production of an edition
Edition
In printmaking, an edition is a number of prints struck from one plate, usually at the same time. This is the meaning covered by this article...
of prints.
Advantages/disadvantages of vitreography
In addition to being relatively inexpensive, glass is chemically inert. It does not oxidize, nor does it change or interact with the composition of printing inks, especially yellows and whites, which can turn green or gray in contact with metal plates. According to Claire Van VlietClaire Van Vliet
Claire Van Vliet was born in Ottawa, Canada in 1933. She is a fine artist, illustrator and typographer who founded Janus Press in San Diego, California in 1955. Van Vliet received the Bachelor of Arts in 1952 from San Diego State College, and the Master of Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate School...
of Janus Press, intaglio vitreographs also have an advantage over metal in that the glass plate wipes cleanly in non-image areas, allowing bright white to coincide with “black that is velvety as a mezzotint
Mezzotint
Mezzotint is a printmaking process of the intaglio family, technically a drypoint method. It was the first tonal method to be used, enabling half-tones to be produced without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple...
” in the finished print.
Another advantage of vitreograph printmaking is its ability to withstand the pressure of the printing press with no discernible breakdown of the imagery, even after numerous runs. Printmaker Ken Kerslake
Ken Kerslake
Fine artist Ken Kerslake was, according to Dr. Tom Dewey of the University of Mississippi,"one of a handful of printmaker-educators responsible for the growth of printmaking in the southeast in the years following World War II." Kerslake's teaching career was spent at the University of Florida in...
wrote, “The glass plate will last indefinitely because, unlike [one of] copper or zinc, it will always return to its original configuration no matter how much pressure is applied.” A disadvantage to this is that unwanted lines or marks on the glass plate cannot be burnished out, as they can on a zinc or copper plate.
The transparency of the glass plate can be used to advantage, in that the plate may be placed over a preliminary drawing on paper to guide the artist in creating a drawing on the plate. This is done by placing the drawing face down on a light table (to allow for the reversal of the image in printing) and placing the vitreograph plate on top of it.
Although glass is unaffected by compression in the printing press, it will break under tension. For that reason, vitreographs are always printed on an etching press, whose rigid bed will support the glass plate firmly. In addition, the press bed must be level and working conditions in the print shop immaculate. A particle of grit or dirt between press bed and the plate will create a tension point that will cause the glass to crack when pressure is applied.
Development of vitreography
American glass artist Harvey LittletonHarvey Littleton
Harvey Littleton is an American educator and glass artist. Born in Corning, New York, he grew up in the shadow of Corning Glassworks, where his father headed Research and Development during the 1930s...
was a tenured professor of art at the University of Wisconsin in Madison when, in June 1974, he taught a workshop in cold-working techniques for glass artists. To cold-work glass is to shape or sculpt cold (as opposed to hot or molten) glass, or to produce texture or decoration on its surface. Cold-working is done by carving, grinding or engraving glass with various tools, or by selectively blasting it with abrasives. As a result of experimenting with various resists for sandblasting, Littleton became intrigued by the possibility of printmaking from glass. He asked his colleague at the University of Wisconsin, printmaker Warrington Colescott
Warrington Colescott
Warrington Colescott is an American artist best known for his satirical etchings. He lives and works in Hollandale, Wisconsin where he and his wife, artist Frances Myers, operate Mantegna Press.- Early life and influences :...
, to ink five of the sandblasted plates from the workshop and print them onto paper in his etching press. The first plate broke under pressure, but after making some adjustments to the press, the rest of the glass plates printed “like dreamboats,” Colescott said. Editions printed from the plates looked promising, and Littleton was awarded a research grant from the University of Wisconsin to continue the development of printing from glass.
In 1976 Littleton retired from teaching and moved to Spruce Pine, North Carolina, where he set up a glass studio, reserving space for an etching press on which he continued to make vitreograph prints. A few years later, at the end of 1981, he hired a woodcut
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
artist, Sandy Willcox, to work as a part-time printer. He encouraged her and his colleagues in glass art, including Ken Carder, Billy Bernstein, Erwin Eisch and Ann Wolff (formerly Wärff), to try their hands at vitreography.
In 1982 Littleton invited curator Jane Kessler of the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina to see the prints that were being created at Littleton Studios. Kessler was impressed by the new technique, and recommended that experienced painters and printmakers be invited to the studio to explore the medium. A grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts made it possible for three painters, Walter Darby Bannard
Walter Darby Bannard
Walter Darby Bannard , also known as Darby Bannard, is an American abstract painter.Bannard attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Princeton University, where he struck up a friendship and working relationship with Frank Stella, which continued after graduation and eventuated in the extreme...
, Ed Blackburn and Hollis Sigler
Hollis Sigler
Hollis Sigler was a Chicago-based artist whose paintings addressed her life with breast cancer. She died of the disease in 2001, at the age of 53. She received degrees from both Moore College of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago...
to collaborate with two master printers, Paul Maguire of Flatrock Press and June Lambla, who had apprenticed at Crown Point Press, in the creation of prints at Littleton Studios. By this time Littleton had constructed a fully equipped printmaking studio that was separate from his glassblowing shop. Sigler visited Littleton Studios in 1985 and produced five prints; Blackburn produced five prints in 1986 and Bannard created seven prints in 1987. The project led to an exhibition at the Mint Museum in 1987 that included a catalog detailing these and other artists’ research in glass plate printmaking. Littleton continued to invite painters, printmakers, potters and glass artists to the studio to fully develop the possibilities of vitreography. Littleton Studios has published vitreograph print editions by 110 artists.
Processes
Vitreography was initially conceived of as an intaglioIntaglio (printmaking)
Intaglio is a family of printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface, known as the matrix or plate, and the incised line or area holds the ink. Normally, copper or zinc plates are used as a surface, and the incisions are created by etching, engraving, drypoint, aquatint or...
process, in which line and tone are carved, engraved or etched into the glass plate’s surface. Printing an intaglio plate involves forcing ink into the grooves and pits, and then wiping the plate’s surface with tarlatan to remove excess ink. The image is transferred to dampened paper under pressure in an etching press.
Color intaglio prints are achieved by processing separate plates, each carrying one or more colors in proportion to the effect desired in the print. The plates are printed in succession onto paper, each carrying color and imagery that, in register with the others, combine to form the finished print.
Tools used to make marks in the glass include diamond point scribers, a flexible shaft power tool with a diamond bit and a sandblaster. Littleton Studios printer Sandy Willcox and her husband David Lewis, a painter, are credited with discovering that white lithograph ink is a versatile resist for sandblasting intaglio glass plates. They found that the viscous white ink, applied to the plate freely with a brush or evenly with a roller, can be drawn into by removing ink with wooden styluses, needles, or paintbrushes. When the drawing is complete, the plate is taken to the sandblasting booth wet. There, the initial onslaught of sand sticks to those areas of the image where ink remains (forming an even more resistant barrier) while etching those parts of the glass revealed by the hand of the artist. After the plate is cleaned of ink, the parts of the plate that received the blast can be seen to have minute pits that hold ink; the areas that were protected by the white litho ink remain smooth and are wiped clean before printing. Contact paper and tape are also used on the plates as a sandblasting resist; those materials create imagery with a hard-edged, stencil effect. Diluted hydrofluoric acid
Hydrofluoric acid
Hydrofluoric acid is a solution of hydrogen fluoride in water. It is a valued source of fluorine and is the precursor to numerous pharmaceuticals such as fluoxetine and diverse materials such as PTFE ....
can be brushed onto the plate to create areas of very delicate tone.
A second method of creating imagery on the vitreograph plate is waterless lithography (sometimes called “siligraphy”). The process was originally developed by 3M Company for commercial printing in the late 1960s; it was purchased and subsequently refined by Toray Industries of Japan. The commercial process is a type of offset printing
Offset printing
Offset printing is a commonly used printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface...
that uses photo-sensitized silicone rubber plates. The waterless lithography process employed in fine art printmaking has been credited to Nik Semenoff, who developed it for use on metal plates.
Donald Furst demonstrated his adaptation of the silicone method to glass plate printmaking in June, 1995, and the Littleton Studios adopted his process for their work with glass plate lithography. The image is drawn onto a ground glass matrix with water-soluble art materials, over which is applied a film of common caulking silicone
Silicone
Silicones are inert, synthetic compounds with a variety of forms and uses. Typically heat-resistant and rubber-like, they are used in sealants, adhesives, lubricants, medical applications , cookware, and insulation....
thinned with synthetic turpentine. Master printer Mark Mahaffey has found that frosted Mylar can be used as a printing matrix as well as 3/8” float glass to create a vitreograph using waterless lithography.
After the silicone layer cures, the original drawing is gently washed from the plate with water, dried, and inked with a roller. The silicone layer protects the non-printing areas of the image while allowing open areas (those free of silicone) to accept ink. Like intaglio vitreographs, waterless lithographs on glass plates are transferred to paper in an etching press.
In 1998 Littleton invited three artists, Bonnie Pierce Lhotka, Karin Schminke and Dorothy Simpson Krause (collectively known as the Digital Atelier), to investigate combining digital imagery with vitreography processes. The artists printed digital images onto clear transfer film using a large format inkjet printer, transferring them to paper in the etching press, along with glass plate imagery processed in the intaglio and/or siligraph techniques.
Artists at Littleton Studios
Since 1981 over 100 artists have worked in collaboration with Littleton Studios to publish vitreograph prints. They include Harvey Littleton's colleagues in glass art, Dale ChihulyDale Chihuly
Dale Chihuly is an American glass sculptor and entrepreneur.-Biography:Chihuly graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Tacoma, Washington. He enrolled at the College of the Puget Sound in 1959...
, Erwin Eisch
Erwin Eisch
Erwin Eisch is a German artist who works with glass. He is also a painter, draughtsman and printmaker. With that of his friend and colleague in glass, Harvey Littleton, Eisch's work in glass embodies the ideas of the international Studio Glass movement...
, Shane Fero, Stanislav Libenský, Paul Stankard
Paul Joseph Stankard
Paul Joseph Stankard, considered the father of modern glass paperweights, was born April 7, 1943 as the second of nine children in an Irish Catholic family. He lived in North Attleboro, Massachusetts in his early years. He graduated from Salem Vocational Technical Institute in Salem, New Jersey...
, Therman Statom
Therman Statom
Therman Statom is an American Studio Glass artist whose primary medium is sheet glass. He cuts, paints, and assembles the glass - adding found glass objects along the way – to create three-dimensional sculptures. Many of these works are large in scale. Statom is known for his site-specific...
, Sybren Valkema and Ann Wolff. Littleton also invited painters, sculptors and printmakers to Littleton Studios to explore the possibilities and limitations of vitreography. Painters Walter Darby Bannard
Walter Darby Bannard
Walter Darby Bannard , also known as Darby Bannard, is an American abstract painter.Bannard attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Princeton University, where he struck up a friendship and working relationship with Frank Stella, which continued after graduation and eventuated in the extreme...
, Louisa Chase, Herb Jackson
Herb Jackson
Herb Jackson is an artist and is the William H. Williamson Professor of Art at Davidson College. In 1999 he was awarded the North Carolina Award, the highest civilian honor in the state, by Governor Jim Hunt of North Carolina.-Life:...
, Mildred Thompson
Mildred Thompson
Mildred Thompson was an African American artist who worked in the media of painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and photography. She was also a writer and, beginning in 1987, was an associate editor for the magazine Art Papers in Atlanta, Georgia...
, Emilio Vedova
Emilio Vedova
Emilio Vedova was an Italian modern painter, considered one of the most important to emerge in his country's artistic scene after World War II.Vedova was born in Venice into a working-class family...
and John Wilde
John Wilde
John Wilde was a painter, draughtsman and printmaker of fantastic imagery. Born near Milwaukee, Wilde lived most of his life in Wisconsin, save for service in the U.S. Army during World War II. He received bachelor and master degrees in art from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he taught...
; potters Cynthia Bringle and John Glick, sculptors Sergei Isupov
Sergei Isupov
Sergei Isupov is a ceramic artist born in Stavropol, Russia now living in Cummington, Massachusetts, United States, where he has been represented by the Ferrin Gallery. He was educated at the Ukrainian State Art School in Kiev and went on to graduate in 1990 from the Art Institute of Tallinn in...
and Italo Scanga
Italo Scanga
Italo Scanga Italian-born American artist.-Biography:Born in Lago, Calabria to Giuseppe and Serafina Ziccarelli, youngest of four children: Carolina, Mafalda and Nicolino.-About his work:...
and printmakers Glen Alps
Glen Alps
Glen Alps was a printmaker and educator who is credited with having developed the collagraph. A collagraph is a print whose plate is a board or other substrate onto which textured materials are glued. The plate may be inked for printing in either the intaglio or the relief manner and then printed...
, Ken Kerslake
Ken Kerslake
Fine artist Ken Kerslake was, according to Dr. Tom Dewey of the University of Mississippi,"one of a handful of printmaker-educators responsible for the growth of printmaking in the southeast in the years following World War II." Kerslake's teaching career was spent at the University of Florida in...
, Karen Kunc, Judith O’Rourke and Dan Welden are a few of the artists whose work has been published by the studio.
Exhibition of vitreographs
The first public exhibition of Littleton’s own intaglio prints from glass plates was at the Brooks Memorial Art Museum in Memphis, Tennessee in 1975. There the prints were shown along with Littleton’s glass sculptures. The same was the case with Ann Wolff’s glass plate intaglios, which were included in a show of her glass artworks, drawings and copper plate intaglios in 1986 at Holsten Galleries in Palm Beach.The first group exhibition of the prints to include works by painters and printmakers, as well as glass artists, was at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina in 1986. Seventeen artists were represented in the exhibition, all of whom had created their prints at Littleton Studios.
The Mint Museum mounted another group exhibition in 1987 titled Luminous Impressions: Prints from Glass Plates. It featured vitreographs by nineteen artists and included prints by glass artist Dale Chihuly
Dale Chihuly
Dale Chihuly is an American glass sculptor and entrepreneur.-Biography:Chihuly graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Tacoma, Washington. He enrolled at the College of the Puget Sound in 1959...
and California printmaker Connor Everts. Everts is credited with coining the term “vitreography” to describe printmaking from glass plates. Another early group exhibition took place in 1988 at the Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg in Coburg, Germany. Titled "Prints from Glass Plates - Vitreographs," the show featured works by Americans and two Germans: Erwin Eisch and Ann Wolff.
Other notable group exhibitions include Vitreographs: Collaborative Works from the Littleton Studio which was exhibited at The Hunter Museum of American Art
Hunter Museum of American Art
The Hunter Museum of American Art is an art museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The museum's collections include works representing the Hudson River School, 19th century genre painting, American Impressionism, the Ashcan School, early modernism, regionalism, and post World War II modern and...
in Chattanooga, Tennessee and The University Gallery at The University of Florida at Gainesville (both in 1993); “Vitreographs” at The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon in 1997 and “Vitreographs: Collaborative Works from Littleton Studio” at the Center for the Arts in Vero Beach, Florida in 1998.
Recent group exhibitions include Reflections on a Legacy: Vitreographs from Littleton Studios at Appalachian State University
Appalachian State University
Appalachian State University is a comprehensive , public, coeducational university located in Boone, North Carolina, United States. Appalachian State, also referred to as Appalachian, App State, or simply App, is the sixth largest institution in the University of North Carolina system...
in Boone, North Carolina (2006) and Harvey K. Littleton + Friends: A Legacy of Transforming Object, Image & Idea, at Western Carolina University
Western Carolina University
Western Carolina University is a coeducational public university located in Cullowhee, North Carolina, United States. The university is a constituent campus of the University of North Carolina system....
in Cullowhee, North Carolina (2006–07). The latter was an exhibition of the work of 75 artworks by seventeen artists, and included vitreographs alongside works in glass, clay, ceramic, painting and book art. Curator Martin DeWitt wrote in the catalog accompanying the exhibition that “Not only is Littleton credited to be the father of the contemporary studio glass movement in the United States…he is also inventor and progenitor of the versatile and unique vitreographic printmaking process.”
Vitreographs in public collections
Vitreograph prints can be found in collections in the United States, including the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Art, San Francisco; Burroughs Chapin Art Museum, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Cincinnati Art MuseumCincinnati Art Museum
The Cincinnati Art Museum is one of the oldest art museums in the United States. Founded in 1881, it was the first purpose-built art museum west of the Alleghenies. Its collection of over 60,000 works make it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Midwest.Museum founders debated locating...
, Cincinnati, Ohio; The Corning Museum of Glass
Corning Museum of Glass
The Corning Museum of Glass, in Corning, New York, explores every facet of glass, including art, history, culture, science and technology, craft, and design....
, Corning, New York; Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida; Milwaukee Art Museum
Milwaukee Art Museum
The Milwaukee Art Museum is located on Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.Beginning around 1872, multiple organizations were founded in order to bring an art gallery to Milwaukee, as the city was still a growing port town with little or no facilities to hold major art exhibitions...
, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida; Portland Art Museum
Portland Art Museum
The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon, United States, was founded in 1892, making it the oldest art museum on the West Coast and seventh oldest in the United States. Upon completion of the most recent renovations, the Portland Art Museum became one of the twenty-five largest art museums in...
, Portland, Oregon; Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Smithsonian American Art Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. with an extensive collection of American art.Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum has a broad variety of American art that covers all regions and art movements found in the United States...
, Washington, DC; Tweed Museum of Art
Tweed Museum of Art
The Tweed Museum of Art is a museum located on the campus of the University of Minnesota Duluth, in Duluth, Minnesota.It has a permanent collection of over 6,000 works covering a range of periods and cultures in art history, with particular strengths in American landscape painting. The Tweed was...
, Duluth, Minnesota and the Vero Beach Museum of Art
Vero Beach Museum of Art
The Vero Beach Museum of Art is located at 3001 River Park Drive, Vero Beach, Florida. It houses regional, state and national art exhibits and includes a sculpture garden. The Vero Beach Museum of Art is the principal cultural arts facility of its kind on Florida’s Treasure Coast...
, Vero Beach, Florida. The Fine Art Museum of Western Carolina University holds an archive of 723 vitreograph editions published at Littleton Studios.