Labino Studio Trillium Series Vase

Today’s Museum Monday treasure from the Museum of American Glass in WV is a Labino Studio Trillium series vase. It has a copper red core with copper red and copper blue flowers cased in crystal. It is signed on the bottom: “Baker 4-1986. LABINO STUDIO.”

Baker O’Brien, the artist, worked with Dominick Labino as his sole apprentice. He is often identified as the originator of the American studio art movement, but Baker was equally a seminal figure in that movement, being one of the first women to become internationally known as a glass artist.

According to a note from the artist:

“The piece I am gifting the museum with is from the “Trillium” series, and requires three furnaces of molten glass to make — a copper blue furnace, a copper red furnace, and a crystal furnace. The first gather is the copper red, next, small ‘wads’ of copper blue and copper red are layered atop each other, then manipulated into the flower form. Because the red is a reduced copper color and the blue is an oxidized copper color, where they interface, the veils of red occurs [sic]. Of course all of the color will develop during the annealing process, as the glass when it is molten (other than the blue) shows no color whatsoever, making it somewhat difficult to see where the flowers are occurring. The bubble is created when an indentation is made in the center just before the entire piece is encased in molten crystal glass and formed into a triangle. Because of the extremely high price of natural gas today, the cost of running three furnaces simultaneously has become prohibitive. Therefore the “Trillium” series is not likely to be repeated, and it has become a signature piece for me.”

The vase is 5 ½” high.