Starting in the late 1970s, French glassmakers opened small, personal workshops for working with hot glass to create unique pieces.
After three decades of a strange absence of glass from the French art scene, limited, however, by the industrial presence of large crystal manufacturers and the artisanal production of small glassworks in the south of France, a new generation of glass artists emerged in the late 1970s, taking the Studio Glass movement as their model.
Initially coming from the Biot glassworks, where most had trained in glassblowing techniques, a few artists decided to open small, independent hot glass workshops, like their American counterparts, to dedicate themselves to creating unique pieces. Very quickly, others followed, coming from different backgrounds.
The first of them, Claude Monod, is the son of the founder of the Biot glassworks. In 1976, he set up his own workshop in the hinterland of Nice with his wife Isabelle and his sister Véronique. He was quickly followed by Walter Couffini, who also opened his workshop that year in the Gard region, then by Jean-Claude Novaro in 1977, Alain and Marisa Bégou in 1979, Robert Piérini and René Deniel in 1980, and Régis and Gisèle Fiévet in 1986.
During this period, they all created vases and bottles decorated with various materials and textures, generally achieved empirically through oxidation-reduction, by inserting enamels and metallic oxides onto the surface or between two layers of clear glass. The production of Claude Morin, who had opened his glassworks in the Drôme region in 1970 to produce monochrome glass colored throughout, also evolved in the 1980s towards the creation of unique pieces in clear glass.