| c u l t u r e | 80 PETER LAYTON 80 80 PETER 80 c E l E b R a T i N g his summer, Peter Layton, founder of London Glassblowing, the UK’s foremost gallery for contemporary glass art, will celebrate his 80th birthday by hosting a landmark exhibition of established glass artists. Prior to the 1960s art made from glass was mostly made in a factories using huge furnaces and teams of labourers, but fifty years ago there was a shift in glass production techniques. Sculptures made of glass began to be hand or mold blown by smaller teams employing a new variety of specialised techniques. At first there were issues involving equipment; scaling down huge furnaces to fit a solo artist’s studio, and the chemistry of glass; how to make stable compositions that were uniquely suited to working by hand. This pioneering movement that began with Harvey Littleton in the United States soon spread to Europe and by the 70s British Art Glass (BAG) orgnisations began to appear. Continues on next page>> T