Sam Herman

Sam Herman (1936-2020) stands at the very centre of the development of the international Studio Glass Movement. He was not only present for the birth of the Movement in the United States, but was its founding father in Great Britain and Australia. This book is the first to deal directly with the genesis of the Movement and the pioneering work of Herman within it, while also shedding light on his wider practice in sculpture and painting.

The son of Polish immigrants, Mexican by birth, and brought up in the tougher New York boroughs, Herman travelled to London in the mid-1960s and went on to head up the Glass Department at the Royal College of Art. From there he inspired a generation of artists, created revolutionary techniques and was instrumental in the development of colour and texture in blown glass.

For art historians, collectors and aficionados of glass, this book provides a welcome and comprehensive evaluation of Herman’s position within the Studio Glass Movement, the history of glass art, as well as the wider context of modern British art. While discussion of his sculpture and painting reveal further dimensions to Herman's ongoing, and indefatigable, explorations in form, composition and colour.

Rollo Campbell is Director of the Frestonian Gallery, London. David Queensberry was Professor of Ceramics at the Royal College of Art from 1959-83 and is a Fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers. Lucy Abel Smith is an art historian and Fellow of the Society of Antiquities. Abel Smith lectures and writes on a wide range of subjects mainly specialising in the history of the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Michael Boylen was a fellow student with Sam Herman at the University of Wisconsin and went on to become a well-known ceramic and glass artist. Mark Hill is an author, publisher, TV presenter, and a leading dealer in twentieth-century decorative glass. Greg Votolato is a lecturer in the Learning Department at the Victoria & Albert Museum. His books include American Design in the Twentieth Century (1998). Michael Regan is an art curator and exhibition organiser having worked for a number of institutions including the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.