Tools can be made...But it is through the insatiable, adventurous urge of the artist to discover the essence of glass that his own means of expression will emerge.
Harvey Littleton
Take a walk through center city Philadelphia, you’ll find evidence of Jane Korman’s vision all around you: on Arch Street, the innovative textile studios and galleries at the Fabric Workshop and Museum will be abuzz with creativity, with thought-provoking exhibitions on view. On Walnut Street, you’ll pass the Jane & Leonard Korman Respiratory Institute at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital—an initiative inspired by her own experience as a lung cancer patient who never took the ability to breathe for granted. Each November at the nearby Pennsylvania Convention Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art Contemporary Craft Show welcomes thousands of eager shoppers whose purchases support both the livelihoods of the artists displaying their work, and the Museum’s ability to acquire important works of contemporary craft. Korman was a longtime supporter and member of the Board of Directors of this annual event through the Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she also served on the Modern and Contemporary Art Committee. And if you venture a bit further afield to the northwest corner of the city, you’ll reach the Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania, where Korman was a Trustee and chair of the Fine Arts Committee. There, she spearheaded the creation of a permanent installation for children called Out on a Limb: A Tree Adventure Exhibit, complete with a nest of giant robin’s eggs and a Squirrel Scramble. It was designed as a fully accessible place for children and adults to explore and revel in nature, and to help them see that “we need trees, and trees need us.”
These efforts have something important in common...for Jane Korman, art, life and nature were not separate entities, but deeply intertwined facets of a life well lived.
These efforts have something important in common: breathing deeply and enjoying nature in every season, celebrating art and creativity in all its forms, and sharing the wonder of exquisite craftsmanship with the historic city she loved, all demonstrating that for Jane Korman, art, life and nature were not separate entities, but deeply intertwined facets of a life well lived. The diversity and exceptional quality of the works of art in this important sale speak to this sense of interconnectedness, and reflect her eye for idiosyncratic beauty and adventurous form. From the playful wit of Judy Kensley McKie’s furniture to the trompe-l'œil everyday objects created in clay by Marilyn Levine, Korman’s collection demonstrates reverence for material mastery, an appreciation for originality and non-traditional forms, and enjoyment of the unpretentious humor that animates craft’s whimsical side. It also offers proof of her artistic foresight: McKie’s Table With Dogs was featured in the American Craft Council’s exhibition New Handmade Furniture: American Furniture Makers Working in Hardwood back in 1979.
She believed that like food and nature, works of art, craft and design are part of our shared feast, and should be enjoyed, not tucked away for “someday.”
Korman was well known as a connoisseur and philanthropist, but she was also a gallery owner and published author. Her 2010 book Splendid Settings: The Art + Craft of Entertaining captured the spirit of her much-beloved collection. On the cover, a bouquet of peonies keeps company with a pair of elegant champagne flutes and three brilliantly glazed works by Toshiko Takaezu; this could only be Jane Korman’s table. Born in Philadelphia, she earned a BA in fine arts from Arcadia University, married Leonard Korman in 1957, and they raised three daughters together. In 1977, she established a gallery dedicated to contemporary American craft called Sign of the Swan in Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill neighborhood. She later opened Swan Gallery near Rittenhouse Square, overseeing both spaces until 1989. Her passion for craft and expertise only grew as she became a trustee of the American Craft Council, and the Museum of Arts and Design, both located in New York, among other organizations. Splendid Settings explains how her varied passions overlapped: nearly 70 recipes, both her own and those shared from friends and artists, are presented against the vibrant backdrop of tables featuring Korman’s collections. She believed that like food and nature, works of art, craft and design are part of our shared feast, and should be enjoyed, not tucked away for “someday.”
To build a collection that encompasses works from such a wide array of genres, time periods, and materials suggests that Korman was inspired by something akin to artistic hospitality. Her collection includes quite a few greats: delicate vessels by George Ohr, vibrant and modern forms by Lucie Rie and Ruth Duckworth, and luminous Toots Zynsky bowls that seem to radiate color and light from their fused glass threads. Rudy Autio’s Blue Horse and Rider shows a woman clinging to the side of a vessel as though it were a wild steed, linking the two distinct forms of pottery and sculpture as though they couldn’t live without one another. Also striking is the number of works obtained directly from the artist, or even commissioned specifically for the Kormans, like Wendell Castle’s sculptural sets of dining tables and chairs.
Jane Korman admired beauty, but didn’t insist on a narrow definition of it.
Jane Korman admired beauty, but didn’t insist on a narrow definition of it. She felt a kinship with artists, being one herself, and understood them through a shared language. Many of the works in her collection are straightforwardly lovely, like Wayne Higby’s serene Landscape Bowl from 1980 or Harvey Littleton’s nearly-edible Ruby Sliced Descending Form from 1985. Others possess a kind of rugged beauty that can only be truly appreciated with an understanding of artistic intent and preternatural skill. Observers might have glanced at Marilyn Levine’s 1984 KCP Bag and seen an ordinary useful object—sturdy, but worn a bit past its prime. Jane Korman saw Levine’s artistic devotion to capturing the contours and details of a personal item freighted with meaning, something that deserved to be realized through careful attention and virtuosic skill. Like nature, artistic inspiration takes infinite forms, and what strikes most people as traditionally beautiful represents just a narrow band of human creative endeavor. As long as a work of art was a triumph of technique, keenly observed, and authentically inspired, it was welcome at Jane Korman’s table.
Sarah Archer is a design writer based in Philadelphia who has authored several books and contributed essays to exhibition catalogs for the Print Center New York, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, the Portland Art Museum, the Milwaukee Museum of Art, and the Museum of Arts and Design. She served as senior curator at the Philadelphia Art Alliance from 2011 through 2014 and was the 2017 Jentel Visiting Critic at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana.
Harvey Littleton 1922–2013
Harvey K. Littleton was a pioneering American glass artist and educator who is widely acknowledged as the “father” of the American studio glass movement. Born in Corning, New York, Littleton came from a family with a long history in the glass industry: his father was a physicist at Corning Glass Works and his mother was involved in the development of Pyrex cookware. The young Littleton grew up listening to many dinnertime conversations about the properties of glass, and visits to the Corning glassworks were a common occurrence.
After serving in the US Signal Corps during World War II, Littleton studied industrial design at the University of Michigan, earning a B.D. degree in 1947. In 1951 he received a M.A. degree from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and accepted a teaching position in the Department of Art and Art Education at the University of Wisconsin, where he remained on the faculty until 1976. Littleton’s initial specialty at Cranbrook was ceramics, not because he preferred it over glass, but because at that time working in glass outside of a factory setting came with a host of difficulties. The prevailing view was that glass was an industrial material requiring too large of an investment for individual artists.
Littleton did not forget about glass, however, and in 1957 took leave from his job to study ceramics in Europe; while there, he visited Catalonian artist Jean Sala who had, at one point, worked in glass. Sala showed Littleton the process of mixing, blowing, and decorating a batch of glass single-handedly from a furnace, thus demonstrating to Littleton that the idea of a one-man hot shop was attainable. He also spent two and a half months in Venice, visiting dozens of small glassworks on the island of Murano and buying blowpipes and other studio-related tools. By the late 1950s, after returning from his studies, Littleton began experimenting with hot glass in his studio in Madison, Wisconsin. It was not long before he realized glass’s versatility and its ability to convey a wide range of artistic expressions.
The final dose of inspiration that set Littleton on his lifelong path was the exhibition Glass 1959: A Special Exhibition of International Contemporary Glass organized by The Corning Museum of Glass. Littleton found it to be a disappointment, proclaiming in a letter: “As a teacher, I am burning to prove that the ‘mystery’ of glassworking is as teachable to artists as we have proven the mysteries of pottery were.” In 1960, he applied to the Guggenheim Foundation for funding toward his proposal for a university glassblowing program and the same year, at the American Craft Council conference, he announced his intention to create said program at the University of Wisconsin. In preparation for such an undertaking, the director of The Toledo Museum of Art, Otto Wittmann, offered him the opportunity to hold two experimental glass workshops at the museum.
In 1962, Littleton and Dominick Labino, a glass researcher at Johns-Manville, organized the two seminal glassblowing workshops at the museum. The Toledo Workshops were the first of their kind in the United States and brought together a group of artists from different disciplines to explore the potential of glass as a fine art medium. They were an enormous success and helped to launch the American studio glass movement. He founded the first university-level glass program in the United States at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he traveled extensively to give lectures and workshops. He also served as a mentor to countless young glass artists, including Marvin Lipofsky and Dale Chihuly, many of whom went on to make their own enormous impacts on the medium.
Littleton's work as an artist was innovative and he experimented with a wide range of techniques, including blowing, casting, slumping, and printing on glass plates (a concept he called vitreography). His sculptures often explored the relationship between form and color via a myriad of creative, organic shapes and patterns. Littleton’s creations have been exhibited in major museums and galleries around the world and he received numerous awards for his art, including the Gold Medal from the American Craft Council in 1983. A visionary artist and educator, Littleton helped to transform the way glass was perceived and used. His work and his teaching had a profound impact on the development of the American studio glass movement, and his legacy continues to inspire glass artists around the world as Helen Lee, current director of the Glass Lab at UW-Madison, notes: “What I see at the heart of Harvey Littleton’s legacy is a truly inspired, far-sighted vision that relied on experimentation, innovation, and education as a means for growth…These virtues of Littleton’s career are timeless.”
Auction Results Harvey Littleton
Post War & Contemporary Art
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