Edward Drummond Libbey, American Glassmaker

Edward Drummond Libbey was a glassmaker, industrialist, artist, innovator and an art collector. Both practical and creative, Libbey forever changed the glass industry with the automatic bottle-making machine and automatic sheet glass machine. This work examines the long career of Libbey, particularly his innovation of American flint cut glass, his contributions to the middle-class American table through affordable glassware, and his enormous art glass and painting collections, which eventually formed the basis for Toledo Museum of Art's collection. Both an historical and critical examination of his contributions, it is a tribute to a man who single-handedly revolutionized glassmaking, a craft which had gone virtually unchanged for 2000 years.