Dominick Labino

Dominick Labino began working for Owens-Illinois, Inc. in their milk bottling plant in Clarion, Pennsylvania after receiving training as an engineer at Carnegie Institute of Technology (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). In Toledo, Ohio he worked with the firm of Johns-Manville for over 30 years, becoming the vice president and director of research and development. There, he invented fiberglass that was later used by NASA as an insulator in spaceships, including Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.

At that time, many artist-craftsmen were working in slumping, fusing, lamp working and laminating, but no fine artists were blowing glass. In 1962, Labino, along with Harvey Littleton, was part of the ground breaking workshop at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, where they planned to create blown glass as art. Among the many challenges they faced in negotiating this new media in art was finding the correct melt temperature for the glass. Labino suggested that they melt the glass directly in the furnace and to use #475 low-melting, high strength formula borosilicate glass marbles—the same glass that he invented for the use in fiberglass—thus revolutionizing the glass blowing process. In 1963, at his home in Grand Rapids, Ohio, Labino set up his own glass blowing studio where he also designed tools and invented new techniques for creating art glass.

As an inventor, Labino held 60 US patents and hundreds in other countries for his inventions in glass working. His fine art work is in more than 100 museums internationally including the Toledo Museum of Art (Ohio), the Cleveland Museum of Art (Ohio), the Art Institute of Chicago (Illinois), Smithsonian Institute (Washington, DC) and the Kuntsmuseum (Düsseldorf, Germany).

Dominick Labino died in 1987 at his home in Grand Rapids, Ohio.

Submitted by 20 North Gallery