Braden, Norah Brown, William J. (William Joseph) Dreisbach, Fritz Eames, Charles Eisch, Erwin Fredericks, Marshall M Hamada, Shōji Marioni, Dante Milles, Carl Turner, Robert Chapman Voulkos, Peter American Craft Council Ann Arbor Potters Guild Black Mountain College (Black Mountain, N.C.) Corning Glass Works Cranbrook Academy of Art Haystack Mountain School of Crafts Midwest Designer-Craftsmen Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) Penland School of Handicrafts Pilchuck School Renwick Gallery University of Michigan Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America

Description

North Carolina36 Pages, TranscriptOriginally recorded on 3 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 6 digital wav files. Duration is 3 hrs., 10 min.An interview of Harvey K. Littleton conducted 2001 March 15, by Joan Falconer Byrd, for the Archives of American Art's Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, in Littleton's home, Spruce Pine, N.C. Littleton speaks of his family background including the work of his father [Jesse Talbot Littleton] at Corning Glassworks, and his early experiences with glass at Corning. He discusses his studies at the University of Michigan in physics and his switch to sculpture; his studies at Cranbrook Academy, in 1941, and his teachers Marshall Fredericks and Carl Milles; his studies on industrial design; becoming a potter; and working at Corning Glassworks, in the summers, inspecting hand-blown coffee pots and top-of-the-stove ware. He discusses his service in the 849th Signal Intelligence Unit in North Africa and Italy during WWII; studying with Norah Braden, at the Brighton School of Art, in England; the importance of, "A Potter's Book," by Bernard Leach; teaching pottery at night, in Ann Arbor, Michigan; the beginnings of the Ann Arbor Potters Guild; making his own potters' wheels; serving on the board of Penland School of Crafts; the development of "American" art and the impact of the GI Bill on the creation and expansion of art departments; the "master-slave apprentice system"; "the genius of Shoji Hamada"; the properties of porcelain; artist communities at Penland and Cranbrook; the influence of...

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Archives of American Art

Record Harvested From

Smithsonian Institution