While new post-war design trends spread through glass factories, initiatives also emerged in the 1960s to open small, personal workshops, allowing glassmakers to create unique pieces without relying on industrial infrastructure.
Initially, this model appeared in the United States thanks to the initiative of Harvey Littleton, a young ceramist who wanted to work with glass independently. After a trip to Europe to search for similar examples, he developed a small hot glass kiln with Dominick Labino, whose effectiveness he demonstrated at the Toledo Museum of Art (Ohio) in 1962, during two symposia that inaugurated the birth of the Studio Glass movement.
Very quickly, this new model spread everywhere to become the dominant and dynamic trend in artistic glass creation for the next three decades. Littleton's experience, initially adopted by his students at the University of Wisconsin, then stimulated the opening of numerous personal workshops across the country, sometimes located in American universities, as well as the emergence of a new generation of American glass artists, including Dale Chihuly and Joel-Philip Meyers.
In Europe, this model also spread very rapidly, particularly thanks to the numerous international events that fostered exchanges with American glassmakers. As a result, small independent workshops emerged, such as those of Erwin Eisch in Germany (1965); Claude Morin and Claude Monod in France (1970 and 1976); Louis Leloup in Belgium (1971); Peter Layton in Great Britain (1976); and Mieke Groot and Willem Heesen in the Netherlands (1976 and 1977). In this context, some glass manufacturers, such as Orrefors in Sweden, also facilitated the integration of new artists, like Bertil Vallien, who wished to create unique pieces.