About the Artist

(1910-1987) Known internationally both as a glass researcher and a scientist, Dominick Labino was also viewed as a fine artist working in glass.

Trained as an engineer at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, he began his professional career at Owens-Illinois, a glass manufacturing plant in Clarion, Pennsylvania.  Having moved to Toledo, Ohio, he spent the next 30 years employed by Johns-Manville, retiring in 1965 as vice president and director of research. For another 10 years he served this corporation as a research consultant.

Backing up, Labino was taught to blow glass in 1940, later embracing glass blowing as a hobby.

Labino and Harvey Littleton staged a glassblowing wowrkshop at the Toledo Museum of Art in 1962. This workshop became the seminal event of the Studio Glass Movement in the United States.

In 1971 Labino received the Governor's Award for Art, State of Ohio. He was presented at that time with the first Ohio Art Council award for his contribution to the development of molten glass as a fine art form. This was the first of many awards bestowed upon this scientist/ artist.

Some of the national and international museums including Labino's glass art in their collections:  Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio; Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, Illinois; Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia; Fowler Museum, Los Angeles, California; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C; Victoria & Albert Museum in London, England; Kunstmuseum in Dusseldorf, Germany; National Glasmuseum in Leerdam, Holland; Pilkington Glass Museum in England and Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, Germany.