Maurice Heaton

Maurice Heaton (1900–1990) was a Swiss-born American glass artist, of English ancestry.^[2] His glass work ranged in subject, and included work in window hangings, murals, lighting fixtures, and tableware.^[2] For most of his life he lived in the hamlet of Valley Cottage in Rockland County, New York, U.S..^[3][4]

In 1985, Heaton was elected as a fellow of the American Craft Council (ACC).^[5]

Biography

Maurice Heaton was born in 1900 in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, to English parents.^[2] His father and grandfather were glass artists.^[4] In 1914 during World War I, his family moved to New York state, and by 1919 the family settled in Valley Cottage, New York which was a rural area at the time.^[3][6]

Heaton attended the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, where he studied engineering.^[6] After leaving college he worked under his father Clement Heaton, as a stained-glass artist assistant.^[4][6]

He had invented a process in 1947 for creating glassware in the studio furnace, and was later part of the 1960s studio glass movement.^[7] His glass studio was in Valley Cottage, New York; it experienced three major fires in 1974, in 1981, and the last fire being in 1988.^[4] It took him a year and a half to rebuild his glass studio after the 1988 fire,^[8] shortly before his death in April 6, 1990.^[1]

Heaton's artwork can be found in museum collections, including at the Brooklyn Museum,^[9] the Metropolitan Museum of Art,^[10] Museum of Arts and Design,^[11] the Corning Museum of Glass, the Art Institute of Chicago,^[12] and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.^[7]

References