By William Warmus
Harry N. Abrams
$60

In 40 years of working with glass, the artist Dan Dailey has created a remarkably varied oeuvre—blown vessels and sculpture, narrative Vitrolite panels, figural lighting fixtures, large-scale murals and other commissions. All have been executed with superb technical proficiency and are notable for refinement in the details and, frequently, a playful, even cartoonish humor. Before being plunged into the dramatic presentation of some 400 images of Dailey’s work in this monograph, the reader is primed by the glass scholar William Warmus, who discusses Dailey’s place in the studio glass movement—he is a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where he founded the glass department in 1973—his talent as an often amused observer of daily life, the influences of Egyptian and Greek art on his work and his fruitful association for more than 20 years with the European glass industry, especially Cristallerie Daum in France. Tina Oldknow’s interview with Dailey probes his affinities with Art Deco and Art Moderne, and his comfort working with a staff to execute his work. All the texts, including a statement by Dailey at the end of the book, stress the importance of drawing in generating his projects. “My sketchbooks are full of imaginings born of meditation on various subjects…. What begins as an ethereal wisp in my ‘mind’s eye’ becomes somewhat real as an ink drawing, then very real as an object.” The concluding chronology is illustrated with photos of the artist and his collaborators at work.