Not One Without the Other: The Collaboration Between Artist and Craftsman in Muranese Glass Susanne K. Frantz Former Curator of 20th-Century Glass, The Corning Museum of Glass © Susanne K. Frantz 2003. All rights reserved. Throughout most of the 3,500-year history of glass, objects have been designed and made by the same person. Although there are exceptions to this tradition, it was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that architects and artists began to exert a presence as designers. At that time it was not unusual for a design to originate from an individual who was unfamiliar with the physical properties of glass and the intricacies of its fabrication. An object could go from drawing board to showroom without any direct communication between the designer and glassmaker. The results sometimes suffered. Eventually a different way of working developed, one that fostered a closer collaboration between artist and artisan. Emile Gallé, working in France at the turn of the twentieth century and one of the greatest artists to ever choose the material, did not blow glass. His most personal and idiosyncratic creations could only be the result of an extended face-to-face dialogue at the furnace with the glassblower. The 1910s and 1920s ushered in the now standard manufacturing procedure of artists, architects, and professional designers working closely with craftsmen on the factory floor.
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