Edris Eckhardt: Pioneer Studio Glass Artist
Edris Eckhardt (1905 to 1998) enjoyed two distinguished careers, first as a highly accomplished ceramist and later as one of the first studio artists in the country to explore the exciting possibilities of glass as her chosen medium.
In the mid 1920′s, Eckhardt took classes in ceramics at the Cleveland Institute of Art and also worked at the Cleveland pottery of Guy Cowen. Then, beginning about 1930, she spent one year studying in New York under Alexander Archipenko, whose constructions in bronze, terra cotta and polychrome ceramics had achieved international recognition. During the 1930′s and 1940′s, Eckhardt taught ceramics at the Institute, exhibiting her work widely and taking many awards.
By the early 1950′s, however, she was becoming dissatisfied with a trend that she referred to as the “cult of the big and the ugly.” She began to experiment with enameling on copper and other materials and then, in 1953, she noticed an example of ancient gold glass while visiting the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Gold glass had achieved its height of popularity in ancient Rome between the 1st and 5th centuries, A.D. The process involved incising a thin layer of gold foil with images or letters and casing the foil between two layers of glass. Eckhardt was told by the museum curator that the process was a “lost art,” and she determined to rediscover it. Before the end of the year, and after thousands of carefully controlled experiments in her kiln, she succeeded in recreating gold glass. Not content with simply imitating the ancients, however, Eckhardt found that by building up compositions with multiple layers of glass, gold foil, enamels and colorful bits of glass, she was able to create highly expressive, beautiful, and often mystically enigmatic works of art.
Recognition of Eckhardt’s accomplishment soon followed. She was awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships, which allowed her to travel to Europe to study glass collections and interview glassmakers to perfect her techniques. She also won a Tiffany Foundation award, was honored with the first living-artist show held at The Corning Museum of Glass, and exhibited her work to great acclaim both in the United States and abroad.
Eckhardt’s first experiments preceded by almost ten years the famous Toledo workshop of 1962, which is credited with having stimulated a tremendous explosion of interest in glass. At this workshop, ceramist Harvey Littleton, glass engineer Dominick Labino and several others designed a small furnace capable of melting glass for the individual artist – effectively moving hot glassworking from the domain of the factory to the intimacy of the artist’s studio. Excited by the tremendous potential of the “new” medium, college and university art departments across the country began to offer courses in glassworking. Graduates from these programs established their own studios, and within a few years, the Toledo experiment had blossomed into an international glassworking movement of unparalleled creative vitality.
Eckhardt’s work in glass continued during the exciting decades of the 1960′s and 1970′s, and it was not until 1986 that she finally closed her studio. During these years she perfected or introduced many creative glassworking techniques, including botanical laminations, lost-wax casting, the casting of glass and bronze together in investment molds, and the use of her now mysterious “glass pen.” Today she is celebrated as one of the great innovators of the studio glass movement and her work is prominently featured in numerous museum collections.
Biographical summary by Kirk J. Nelson. E.mail knelson @ nbmog.org (omit spaces)with inquiries.