Chronology*

1952   
Becomes an Eagle Scout. As a Scout, he attends the National Jamborees in Pennsylvania, California, and an International Jamboree in Canada.

Lipofsky attends drawing classes in Chicago when he was about twelve years old. On his own Marvin travels about one hour by train to the class from the suburbs.

1957   
Attends the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

Enters art school majoring in industrial design; sought a profession that "had a job at the end." After taking all the sculpture classes available, the idea of becoming an industrial designer lost its appeal.

Working in ceramics, he prefers hand building rather than working on the potter's wheel.

Visits the Art Institute of Chicago where he encounters two large ceramic sculptures by Peter Voulkos and John Mason. This was a turning point in his undergraduate career.

“I didn’t know the people who made them, but they really turned me on. It was something that I had been trying, a feeling that I had been interested in when I was in school... When I saw these two works, it was just incredible... There was so much energy behind those pieces.”  

1962   
Lipofsky receives a B.F.A. in industrial design.

With a friend he met in a sculpture class, Lipofsky drives around Europe in a Volkswagen Bug after graduation. While in Italy, he makes wax sculptures and has the work cast in bronze. Marvin completes the trip on his own by taking a train to Venice.  He visits Murano and watches Glassblowing; he has no inkling then that glass would play a key role in his life.

In the fall, attends the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He intends to work with both clay and metal. His first class is Harvey Littleton’s ceramics course. Littleton began the class by offering the students an opportunity to blow glass for the first time in an American university.

Tombstones: An early series of Lipofsky’s were his “tombstones”— ceramic slabs about three feet tall. Lipofsky discovers that there was an unused space of about six inches in width between the car (car kiln) and the door of the kiln. He plans his work to fit into this space and makes each piece just tall enough—about three feet—to fit under the peephole of the kiln door. It was a perfect size for his "tombstone" and he could place a sculpture in every firing.

1963   
Lipofsky wins several awards while a graduate student. In 1963, he receives an award for his metal sculpture, "Le Pont Neuf II," in the Wisconsin Painters and Sculptors: 49th Annual Exhibition of Wisconsin Art, Milwaukee Art Center. That same year he also wins an award for three ceramic sculptures at the Forty-third Annual Wisconsin Designer-Craftsman Exhibition, Milwaukee Art Center, juried by Paul Smith of the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City.  

Lipofsky receives MS in sculpture.  

1964  
As Lipofsky remembers in the spring:

“I walked into the studio early one morning and Harvey was sitting there in his office reading his mail and he handed me a letter and he said, “There’s your job, boy.” It was a letter from Ed Rossbach at the University of California in Berkeley asking Harvey to come out for a semester to teach a glass class.  I wrote a letter back saying that I was interested. They hired me to come to Berkeley to start a glass program.

Lipofsky receives MFA in sculpture.

Marvin marries Erma Smith, who he met in graduate school (1962-63).

Lipofsky attends the first World Congress of Craftsmen, Columbia University, New York City, to help Littleton introduce studio glass blowing.  Meets Voulkos, Robert Arneson, Tapio Wirkkala, Erwin Eisch, Sybren Valkema, and Tio Giambruni.

1964   
At twenty-six, Lipofsky joines the faculty of UC Berkeley’s Decorative Arts Department, which became the Design Department in the College of Environmental Design in 1965.

Lipofsky, with the help of his six women students, built the glass furnace and equipment for the class in the new Wurster Hall building.           

Lipofsky comments on his teaching style:

“I wanted to confront them (students) not only with problems but with ideas. I filled the walls of the studio with information I had gathered, and anybody could have walked in and discovered everything we knew just by reading the wall; I prided myself that we didn't keep secrets. My goal was not to explain everything from A to Z, but to encourage them to do their own research and discovery. I wanted to provide as much equipment as I could…gather so students wouldn't have excuses for not exploring fully. I liked creating obstacles for them, not so great that they would fall over them, but maybe just trip a little. It was my way of increasing their curiosity.”

The Free Speech Movement on campus and the antiwar activity had a profound effect on Lipofsky and his work. “California was a very exciting and a very free place, which opened my eyes…”

1965   
Daughter, Lisa Beth, born in 1965 in Berkeley. 

1967   
The fiber artist Professor Trude Guermonprez at the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC), invites Lipofsky to teach a summer glass workshop funded by a grant from the American Crafts Council. The summer class eventually led to the establishment of a glassblowing program at CCAC.

Lipofsky participates in a summer exhibition of local artists at the San Francisco Museum of Art. Artists included Robert Arneson, Robert Bechtle, Kathan Brown, Patricia Forrester, Tio Giambruni, David Gilhooly, Sue Hall, Roger Jacobsen, Steven Kaltenback, George Miyaski, Mel Ramos, Sam Tchakalian, Gerald Walburg, and others.

 1968   
One-person exhibition at the Hansen Gallery, San Francisco.

 “It was an exciting time... I watched the glass movement grow with the skills. We started from nothing and people now are . . . beginning to learn so much faster; it took us a few years and now they learn in a few months what we learned in a year or two.”

To expand his own knowledge, Lipofsky travels to Europe and eventually Asia to visit glass factories, designers, and artists. He amassed a library of thousands of slides taken during these travels, which, as he has said, “influenced my role as a teacher. I always brought back suitcases of information, which I then shared with the students.”

Lipofsky's connection with glass factories begins in the United States at the Blenko Glass Factory in Milton, West Virginia. Joel Phillip Myers working at the Blenko Glass Company as a designer invited Marvin to visit him. Late one afternoon, at the end of the factory workday, Myers and Lipofsky worked making several sculptures using the factory facilities. In 1969, the pieces Lipofsky made at Blenko were exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in New York City. Later the work was shown at the Lee Nordness Gallery, New York City, one of the first galleries to show works in craft media.

1969   
Death of father, Henry.

Lipofsky began to obscure the surface of the glass artworks he was creating. He experimented with painting, copper electroplating on glass, using rayon flocking, applying decals, mirroring, and fuming metal salts on the hot glass.

“At that time, I was not interested in the purity of the glass material. … My interest was to push glass a far as I could and to get as much out of it as I could. While in school, I had always used abstract ideas, so I continued to work in an abstract way with my glass.

“[At first I] rejected the glass. I fought with it. I covered up the surface and painted on it, and people would get in big arguments. They would say that it wasn’t right and it wasn’t true to the material and all that. Now it’s come that I have accepted the material almost entirely.” 

Environment Series: In 1969, on a tour of the Toledo Museum of Art's basement storage, Lipofsky sees a display of Egyptian glass. Glass heads, which in all likelihood had been inlaid in wood originally, were displayed in velvet-lined containers like small jewelry boxes. The presentation style appealed to Lipofsky, and he begins to place mirrored and electroplated objects into custom-fitted flocked boxes with random numbers and letters.

The Counter Set Series:  Describing the development of this series, a variation on the California Loop Series, Lipofsky recounts:

“Marc Treib [professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley] and I were discussing [in a seminar for glass students] the fact that most people view other artists’ work mainly in photographs, or in slide shows — “art in the dark” as we called it. We took my original pieces and made silkscreen copies, printing on plastic and canvas. The multiple copies were displayed as a group. We called this series Counter Set and we did installations. One installation was shown at the Toledo Glass National III, Toledo Museum of Art in 1970.”

California Loop Series: Lipofsky combines individual pieces of blown glass, adhering them together to create works with long extensions and bulbous forms. “I’d make lots of objects and then I’d take them back to my studio and put them all together.”  He considers this his first major series. The Series is part of an exhibition of Lipofsky’s work at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in New York City. “

“[I] was trying to push the glass into something more sculptural... I was trying to lift the glass up, off the base, and make it work with negative space as well as the positive shape of the glass material ... using the glass more for a feeling than using the glass as glass itself. Glass is very fluid, very organic and very sensual and I tried to use it in those terms, so I covered it up a lot with flocking, and I painted on it; it was a very exciting, experimental time. I also tried to make it larger than it was, so I glued more than one piece together, usually covering up the joints so that it would all flow together. Glass to me was very organic and very sensual. I denied the quality of the glass material for a long time because the quality of the glass material that we were using wasn’t very good, but that wasn’t important to me, to have pure crystal or anything to that effect or color. It was just important to use the material to make shapes and forms in an organic sense and abstract.”

“People read a lot of things into my work that I didn’t intend…  When the glass drips off the pipe it becomes phallic. When there’s a concentration of glass at the end of a bubble and it drips, it looks feminine. That’s just something that happens naturally.

“I always felt that glass was a sensual material and I tried to use it in that way. I liked the excitement of “doing it,” not so much conceptualizing things beforehand, but using the material at the instant of its forming, using it instantly and capturing it as floating in space.

“I’ve been trying to get away from the prettiness of the glass, and it hasn’t worked. It’s too seductive. I’ve played with seduction.”

1969   
Germany: Lipofsky's first factory experience in Germany was at the Glashütte Valentin Eisch (family of Erwin Eisch), Frauenau, where he made several sculptures for an exhibition at the Boymans-van Benningen Museum, Rotterdam, Holland in 1969. He also worked in Zwiesel in 1980, and created the Zwiesel Series. In the same year he created the Sussmuthglass Series at the Sussmuth Glass Factory in Immenhausen, Germany.

1970-71  
Sabbatical. On leave from both UC Berkeley and CCAC, Lipofsky begins an extended trip to Europe to study, learn and speak on glass sculpting for studio artists.

Sweden: Lipofsky begins his international connection to glass when he lectures at a meeting of the International Commission on Glass in Vaxjö, in the southern region of Smäland, the center of the Swedish glassmaking industry. At the meeting, Lipofsky met Ludovico Diaz de Santillana, the director of the Venini Glass Factory, who invited Lipofsky to work at the Venini factory in Murano.

The Netherlands:  He was invited to teach at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Sybren Valkema invited Lipofsky to be the Academie's first visiting artist, teaching for him while he was busy with administrative duties. This was the first European school where students were able to blow their own glass rather than working in a factory, where, customarily, they would create their designs on paper and the factory glassblowers would do the actual production.

While in the Netherlands, he is invited to work at the Royal Leerdam Factory by Willem Heesen, a designer at the factory. Initially, Heesen expected that Lipofsky would “work as the Americans did,” that is, as an individual, creating sculpture.  Lipofsky, instead, expressed an interest in designing pieces and working with the master glassblower, Leendert van der Linden, “working as the designers work.” (Part of Lipofsky’s reluctance to work alone was that the situation in the Leerdam factory was so different. In America, artists were used to small studio furnaces. In the Netherlands, they were using large, industrial furnaces.)

Lipofsky experiments with a traditional glass form, the bottle and stopper. His is a sculptural interpretation of the form, with one glass piece fitting inside another. After preparing color drawings, he watches the master glassblower Van der Linden blow an exact copy of his loosely drawn sketch, following it as if it were a precise, technical drawing. The pieces are blown on two separate days so they would fit together accurately. This was the first time, as Lipofsky put it, “I hadn’t touched all the glass” myself.”  “I didn't actually have hands on the work; I designed the pieces on paper. This was the last time I worked in this way.” The result of that work was the Leerdam Colour Series 1970, the first of his many collaborations with master glassblowers worldwide. The Series was shown at the Stedelijke Museum and galerie d'eendt in Amsterdam.

Finland: Designer Kaj Frank invites Lipofsky to Finland to give a seminar at the Atheneum School of Art and Design (now the University of Art and Design). Lipofsky and the students organize a furnace that allows the students to blow glass at the school for the first time. Although, the students in the European tradition visited the factories to have their designs reproduced, this was the first time they worked directly with glass.

Lipofsky is invited to work at the Nuutajärvi Glass Factory in Finland. As he watched the workers blowing glass into molds, he observed the "overblow," a superfluous part that is extruded during the process of blowing the glass into the mold. Lipofsky remarks: “The afterblow (overblow) that came out the top was always very interesting, very sensual and organic, but of course they would cut this off.”  Lipofsky decided to incorporate the "overblow" into his sculpture.

Retrieving some used molds that were thrown away, Lipofsky had glass blown into the mold without closing it, so the glass protruded through the openings. Because Lipofsky could not quite explain what he wanted, he asked if he could become the "mold boy," (the person who opens and closes the mold for the glassblower) and they agreed. “I jumped in and started handling the mold to regulate the shape. This was my first hands-on experience, and from that time on I was always part of the forming process.” The Suomi Series was the result of this work in the factory.

1971   
Israel: Lipofsky is invited by the architect Professor Arthur Goldreich to be a visiting professor at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. Lipofsky and the students build the equipment including all the glass tools in three weeks. While in Israel, the students take him to visit the Arab glassblowers in Hebron who worked with equipment and techniques that were hundreds of years old.

Lipofsky attends a glass gathering "GAS II" at the Penland School, Penland, North Carolina.  This group of glass notables decided to establish an official organization—the Glass Arts Society (GAS).

Marvin and Erma divorce.

1972
Switzerland: Lipofsky is invited to the first International Glass Symposium at the Musée Bellerive in Zurich, organized by the artist and factory owner Roberto Niederer. This is one of the first European glass conferences. It includes a workshop space outdoors where artists blew glass and an exhibition, Glas heut: Kunst oder Handwerk. Exhibitors included Erwin Eisch (Germany), Willem Heesen and Sybren Valkema (The Netherlands), Gianni Toso, Fulvio Bianconi and Gian Paolo Martinuzzi (Italy), Raoul Goldoni (Yugoslavia), Erik Höglund (Sweden), Jamie Carpenter, Joel Myers, Harvey Littleton and Marvin Lipofsky (United States). Lipofsky shows work he had made at the Nuutajärvi Glass Factory in Finland.

Italy: After Zurich, Lipofsky makes a brief stop at Roberto Niederer's Buzzoni Glass Factory in Gessata, Italy, making a few pieces with the workers in one morning. 

Lipofsky accepted Ludovico Diaz de Santillana’s invitation to visit and work at the Venini Glass Factory on Murano. Santillana assigns a worker, Serano, to assist Lipofsky for a few hours at the end of the workday. Lipofsky works with Serano for a couple of days.  When discussing this experience with Gianni Toso, the charismatic man he had met at the symposium in Zurich, Toso decides to accompany Marvin to the factory the next day to assist him.

In his work with Toso, which results in the first Venini Series, Lipofsky continues his use of molds, this time with the globe-shaped molds he discovered in the factory. He manipulates the mold, creating an opening where glass could bulge out.

Lipofsky also continues with his conceptual work while in Venice. "Ponte de Ghetto Novo."

“With the help of Gianni [Toso] and his little boat, we took all my pieces from the factory and taped up the holes; I had made a lot of pieces that I wasn't particularly interested in. We went to the canal in Campo Ghetto Novo—near a bridge that I had liked very much—and we set the pieces into the canal and let them float. Then I sat in a boat and took a series of photographs which I still use today in my lectures. As the people walked over the bridge, they noticed these glass pieces floating on the water: first a nun came over, and then an older woman, dressed perfectly in a print dress just like all the older ladies in Venice, and she kept looking and looking . . . and finally she took one last look at the pieces as she was going down the bridge; I use these slides when I lecture about my work, because this was one of my first conceptual pieces. It caught the feeling of Venice and the community; of the glass and the water and the people.”

Lipofsky reflects on his work from Murano:

“The Italian masters are the most skilled by far, and they have abilities in creating both small and large objects that far surpass what is commonly done.

“I was trying to capture the feeling of the Italians, but also trying to use my own way of visualizing things… The Italian color and the Italian technique is so overpowering, it's difficult to try and introduce your own aesthetic, interact, but I tried.

“I tried to use some of the cane work, changing the direction of the cane and making my own patterns.

“I always took photographs of things that interested me. Once, I took a photo of a brightly colored striped bikini, but it wasn't until I worked in Italy that I was able to integrate that image into my work. The striped bikini is related directly to the Italian cane technique.”

 1972   
Lipofsky, as expected, does not receive tenure at the University of California. The design department is phased out.  After leaving the university, Lipofsky begins to teach full-time at the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC), an art school in Oakland, California.

While trying to broaden his students’ experience in glassmaking, Lipofsky assigns problems using molds and begins to work with molds. The result of his experimentation was the Great California Food Series. Molds were made of cast aluminum from real objects. 1/4 Pounder with Cheese was made from a mold of a McDonald’s hamburger. There was a mold made from a ceramic hot dog that produced The Irv Tepper Memorial Hot Dog Cup. A glass image of Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame was made using a plastic bank as a basis for playful experimentation was the norm in the art world at this time. Funky and irreverent works appeared in all media.

1973   
A photo series by Linda Conners, entitled 36 Pickles, documents Lipofsky holding red, white and blue pickles. The contact sheet that resulted showed thirty-six exposures with thirty-six colorful pickles that had been cast from a mold made from a genuine dill pickle from Smedley’s Delicatessen in Philadelphia.

1974   
Conceptual Works: At the tenth anniversary conference of the World Crafts Council at York University in Canada, Lipofsky produces a conceptual work entitled Canadian Lines with Robert Held. Randomly enlisting the help of a dozen people, he asked each of them to hold a wooden slat that had been dipped in hot glass. Lipofsky then ran strings of hot glass from person to person, connecting the slats. The participants had to hold still to maintain the integrity of the piece. He spoke to the participants and photographed them, creating a record of the interaction of people and material.

Lipofsky receives his first National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a second fellowship in 1976.

1975   
Japan: For many years, Lipofsky had shown to his students a slide depicting a historic sake vessel. He had been interested in visiting Japan and learning more about the glass traditions there. Lipofsky’s first work experience in Asia came about through his contact with a Japanese student who was coincidentally the son of a glass factory owner. This resulted in his being the first American to work in a Japanese glass factory, the Nambu Glass Factory in Osaka. He found the Japanese experience different from his work in other locations. In general, everything in Japan was on a smaller scale. This affects his work, which has the characteristic sensitivity of other Japanese art forms. “The environment of Japan somewhat dictated the small scale.” “I tended to have the feeling that I didn't want to do large, large pieces there.”

Italy: Lipofsky returns to Italy and creates the second Venini Series 1975 with Gianni Toso. Two years later, in 1977, again working with Gianni Toso at the Fratelli- Toso factory, he began the pieces that would become the Split Series, a departure from earlier work. He had begun to experiment with cutting individual pieces apart while at Venini and in Japan and now he took the idea further. He cut the large blown glass pieces into two parts and opened up the glass forms, revealing their interiors. “The work became larger and more complicated in execution. In order to make the forms I was interested in, I would handle the mold or the forming process of the glass while someone else handled the blowpipe so that I could control the form of the work.”

1976   
Lipofsky becomes editor of the "Glass Art Society Newsletter," and establishes the Glass Art Society Journal in 1979.  

Lipofsky submits the Corning Piece, for an exhibition held at an annual Glass Art Society conference in Corning, New York. Marvin came across an open carton bearing the Corning Glass label; it contained ashtrays that had been mass-produced by the company. Lipofsky took the box and submitted it as his exhibit. The box and its contents were displayed as he had found them. Celebrated as a Duchampian maneuver, the piece offered a subtle comment on the emphasis in the glass movement on the individual handwrought object.

1977   
Lipofsky organizes The Conceptual Club. One day a week, he and students would experiment with ordinary, everyday objects made of glass, then photograph their work. Fluorescent tubes might be attached to campus buildings at CCAC in unusual places, outlining shadows of roof lines or leaning against walls. For another conceptual piece, he asked students to hold large sheets of glass. The students were asked pose in various places, for example, lying on the steps of a building or leaning against a wall. The glass reflected the people, events and objects in their environment and became a seventies “happening.” The work was entitled Four Pieces of Glass/Four Students and was repeated with several successive groups of students.

1978   
Lipofsky serves as president of the Glass Art Society, from 1978 - 1980.

1979
Lipofsky meets the sculptor Christopher Wilmarth, a visiting artist at the University of California, Berkeley. Wilmarth was invited by Lipofsky to work with his students. At first reluctant to work with blown glass, Wilmarth found the CCAC students more than willing to facilitate his ideas. This resulted in his sculptural series Breathe: Inspired by seven poems of Stéphane Mallarmé. This was the first of several visits Wilmarth made to California and to CCAC and these contacts began a friendship that lasted until Wilmarth’s death in 1987.

1980   
Yugoslavia: Lipofsky was invited to the III International Symposium organized by the Republic Community of Culture and Serbian Glas Factory, Paracin. He arrived in Yugoslavia the day after Marshal Tito's funeral; it was a strange but fascinating experience. Also invited were Bert Van Loo, Netherlands, and Mari Mészáros, Hungry and a group of local designers. During the symposium Lipofsky made the series Fragments Jugoslavija Stakla.

1982   
Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic: Professor Stanislav Libensky invites Lipofsky to work at the Crystalex Corporations, Hantich Factory in Novy Bor that summer. Lipofsky was the first American to successfully work in this Eastern bloc country.  For the first time, Lipofsky begins to create his own wooden forms for shaping the glass. He works with the young Glassmaster Petr Novotny, who was able to blow the large pieces Lipofsky had in mind for the new wooden molds.

In the fall, Lipofsky is invited as a guest to the International Glass Symposium I (IGS I) at the Crystalex factory. During the symposium, the factory production line is closed and the factory teams (as well as teams from other factories) work with dozens of invited artists.  Lipofsky is the only American artist to participate in all seven of the Novy Bor International Glass Symposia. He develops the Czech Flowers series in 1991 at the International Glass Symposium IV. For this series, Lipofsky split the original forms in half to symbolize the freedom eventually attained by the Czech and Slovak people following the velvet revolution, when the Czech Republic was born.

1982
California Storm Series: During holidays and school vacations, Lipofsky would use the facilities at CCAC for his own studio work. During the winter break in 1982, Lipofsky noticed the striking similarity between the newspaper weather satellite photos of storms and the colors and patterns in the glass; thus naming the series after the storm.

1983   
Lipofsky wins the Honorific Prize, Vicointer '83 at the first International Exhibition of Contemporary Glass in Valencia, Spain.

1984   
Pilchuck Glass School: Lipofsky is invited to be a visiting artist and creates the Pilchuck Series. Work produced there reflected the influence of the fog, rain, mud, and sun typical of the local environment. Because of the technical skills and sensitivities of Rich Royal and Robbie Miller and the team at Pilchuck, Lipofsky was able to produce large pieces.

1985
Lipofsky is named a California Living Treasure by the Creative Arts League of Sacramento, California.

1986   
New Orleans: Lipofsky is invited as a guest artist to the opening of the Pace Wilson Glass Studio at Tulane University by the Sculptor Professor Gene Koss. While there, Lipofsky created the four works comprising the Newcomb Series.

Lipofsky is elected as a life member of the Glass Art Society.

1987   
During a tumultuous period at CCAC, Marvin, then president of the faculty senate, becomes embroiled in a conflict with the administration and was fired. He then begins to work full-time in his studio. While relieved to be outside the bureaucracy of higher education, he misses the student contact.

Japan: A second sojourn in Japan in 1987 saw the origins of the Series Otaru, the result of Lipofsky’s work at The Glass Studio in Otaru on the island of Hokkaido. Lipofsky worked with the Glass master Mitsunobo Sagawa. The colors of Hokkaido, the ocean, mountains, and spring flowers, characterize the Series Otaru work.

Invited by Koji Matano, head of the Miasa Bunka Center in Nagano, Japan, Lipofsky teaches at the summer arts program in August. Professor Makoto Ito of Tama University and the glass artists Yoshihiko Takahashi and Kenji Kato worked with Lipofsky in the small glass studio. Because the studio was small inside, the students often observed through the studio windows.

1989  
Soviet Union/Russia: Lipofsky’s Soviet Series was produced during a visit to the Experimental Ceramic Sculpture Factory in L'vov (in Ukraine). He was required to travel through Moscow in order to attend the first International Blown Glass Symposium in L'vov. He returned three more times to what had become Russia and to the renamed city, L’viv. Each time he attended the International Symposium he produced a new series of work at the factory: in 1992, L’viv Flowers; in 1995, Autumn in L’viv Again; and in 2001, L’viv Group.

1990   
Seattle: After the Glass Art Society Conference is held in Seattle, Lipofsky spends one day working at Ben Moore’s studio. Moore, an accomplished glass artist and designer, was a former student at CCAC. Lipofsky worked again with Rich Royal, Robbie Miller and team using his friend Fritz Dreisbach's discarded remnants of filigrana cane to create Seattle Series.

Finland: Lipofsky is invited to return to Finland by Tapio Yli-Viikari, the head of the glass program at the University of Art and Design, to mark the twentieth anniversary of Lipofsky’s first glass seminar there in 1970. In the intervening years, a complete glass program had been developed at the school. The Suomi Finland Series 1990–1992 is blown during this visit. Lipofsky works at the Humppila Glass Factory with the master glassblower Unto Suominen.

Lipofsky and Ruth Okimoto marry.

1991   
Bulgaria: At one of the International Glass Symposia in Novy Bor, Czechoslovakia, Marvin met Rayko Raykov, who was on the faculty of the Academy of Fine Art. Rayko arranges for Lipofsky to work at the Belopal Glass Factory near the city of Varna on the Black Sea. The sculptural work, Series Belopal, along with a number of drawings, are shown at the Union of Bulgarian Artists Gallery in Sophia, Bulgaria.

Lipofsky is elected to the College of Fellows, American Craft Council, New York.

1992   
Poland: At the invitation of Professor Kazimierz Pawlak, Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, Lipofsky participated in a small symposium of Polish artists at the Violetta Glass Factory in Stronie Slaskie. These annual gatherings were intended primarily for Polish artists, but occasionally artists from other countries were invited. Lipofsky created the Violetta Series which includes several wall pieces.

1995   
Death of mother, Mildred.

Lipofsky is invited to Pilchuck as a guest artist and spends one morning in the studio (hot shop) making six sculptures resulting in the Pilchuck Group with the help of Tom Kreager and Pilchuck team.

1995   
Taiwan: Tsai Sung-Ping (Harvard) of the Royal Li Land Art Glass Company invites Lipofsky to participate and lecture at the first International Festival for Glass Arts in the city of Hsinchu. He also works in Tsai's studio/factory. Once again, Lipofsky was the first American invited to work in Taiwan. Group Taiwan is the result of working at both studios. 

1996   
China: Willy Andersson, a Swedish glassworker and an international technical glass consultant and friend, arranged for Lipofsky to work in China at the Dalian Shengdao Glassware Factory; he also worked at the Liaohe Oilfield Glassware Factory. The collaboration of working in the two factories was arranged by Andersson and at the invitation of Ng Juak Khoon, the president of the Intra Development Company.

  "I used colors available in the factory, and the work ended up primarily red. I also incorporated small bits of color, representing the many different peoples of China. I tried to incorporate a feel of the mountains that were quite different in shape than any other mountains I'd ever seen. But I don't think I was very successful in that aspect.”

Lipofsky is made an honorary member of the Hungarian Glass Art Society.

1997   
Germany: When Lipofsky is first invited to attend the Lauscha Glass Symposium in 1989, the first American to be invited, there was not enough time for him to procure the necessary visa and documents. Back in Lauscha, in preparation for the symposium, flags from all the nations expected were installed, including the American flag. At the start of the symposium, the American flag was missing. The mystery was solved when a young boy confessed to the theft.  He stole the flag, he said, in order to sleep with it, the closest he would come to the United States. Hearing this story, Lipofsky vowed he would go to Lauscha and, when invited again in 1997, he accepted the invitation. The Lauscha Group was made at Farblashütte and reflected the colors of the nearby mountains—greens, reds, purples. Lauscha is indeed a village of glass, prominent in flame working and where the school teaches the making of "glass eyes."

2000   
Germany: Lipofsky returns to Frauenau, Germany to attend an International Glass Symposium.  Again working with Petr Novotny, he creates the Frauenau Group Der Wald/The Forest representing the Bayerischer Wald where Frauenau is located.  Lipofsky also creates a series of monotypes at Bild-werk. 

Kentucky: Professor Stephen Powell invites Lipofsky to work with his glassblowing team at Centre College in Danville. There, as he did in other situations, he made use of materials at hand. On this occasion, Lipofsky works with Powell's rejected murrini cane. The sculptures are known as the Kentucky Series.

In November 2001, Lipofsky has quadruple heart bypass surgery.

2002   
Slovakia: Lipofsky travels to Lednike Rovne to attend the International Glass Symposium at the Rona Crystal Company. He produces the Rona Series. Much of the glass was incompatible, so the series remains incomplete.

Receives Honorary Award for Inspiration and Instigation of the Bay Area Glass Community.

2003   
A Major Retrospective of Lipofsky’s life and work is held at The Oakland Museum of California, CA. Curated by Suzanne Baizerman, with a coinciding catalog published, “Marvin Lipofsky: A Glass Oddysey.”

Invited by Fellerman Rabe Gallery, Sheffield, MA, as a Visiting Artist. He produces two sculptures in the series, entitled Berkshires Group, working with Stephen Powell and Powell’s excess murrini.

In August Lipofsky has a second heart bypass surgery.

Awarded James Renwick Master of the Medium by the James Renwick Alliance, a prestigious Biennial Award that has honored some of the most significant artists in American Craft. Each awardee is recognized for their excellence in craftsmanship, influence in the medium and overall contributions to the field.         

2004   
At the invitation of Emma Varga, attends a symposium, Something Different, Australia. The symposium brings together artists from Australia and overseas. Lipofsky makes work at the Jam Factory (Adelaide)and Denizen Glass Studio (North Manly) to create the Australian Landscape Series.

Invited by department Chair, Robert Herhusky, Lipofsky works with students at California State University, Chico, CA to create Chico Group II.  This is his third time working in Chico, other visits were in 1988 and 1997. 

2005   
Israel: To commemorate his first visit the Israel in 1971, Lipofsky is invited to work at the Bezael Academy in Jerusalem. At the invitation of Department Chair D.D. Linn, Lipofsky returns to once more work with the students, demonstrating his sculptural approach.

The Bezalel Group series conveys his impressions of the desert colors and the rich culture of Jerusalem.

Receives a Lifetime Achievement in Art Made from Glass, from The Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass (AACG).

Taiwan: Lipofsky is invited again to Hsinchu, Taiwan, although this visit does not result in a series.  He travels there once more in 2010, with no resulting series.

2007   
Lipofsky spends a full week working as a visiting artist at the Museum of Glass, in Tacoma, WA. The facilities and abilities of the assistants allowed Lipofsky to create works much larger than usual. Here he is able to make more than 30 works, although many of them remain unfinished due to his health concerns. SF Tacoma Series and Tacoma Series.

2009   
Receives an Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award from the Glass Art Society, while attending a GAS meeting in Corning, New York.

2011   
Marvin and Ruth divorce.

2012   
Many meetings commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Studio Glass movement are held this year. Marvin lectures at the Toledo Museum, the DeYoung Museum, the San Jose Museum, the Oakland Museum, and travels to Santa Fe, NM, to meet with the local Glass Organization.

2013   
Marvin undergoes heart valve replacement surgery.

2015   
Solo exhibition at SOFA Chicago with the Duane Reed Gallery. Gives his last lecture there.

* Adapted from Suzanne Baizerman’s timeline in “Marvin Lipofsky: A Glass Odyssey,” 2003.