Jar with Textured Surface by Sharif Bey

This commanding vessel brings the visual language of acclaimed Pittsburgh-born artist Sharif Bey into a richly textured, architectural form. Its rounded silhouette is covered with repeated geometric impressions, while an earthy palette and weathered surface give the work the presence of an object that might be simultaneously ancient and contemporary.

Bey is internationally recognized for work exploring identity, adornment, ritual, and the visual traditions of Africa and Oceania. A formative apprenticeship at Pittsburgh's Manchester Craftsmen's Guild launched a career that has included a Fulbright Scholarship, a United States Artists Fellowship, and works entering collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Carnegie Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art, and Hirshhorn Museum.

Bey has also had a long relationship with Pittsburgh Glass Center, where his explorations in clay have expanded into glass. A powerful work by an artist whose Pittsburgh roots have grown into an international career.

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 9 x 11 x 9

Self Reflection by Zachary Layhew

At first glance, Self Reflection appears spare and elegant: a beautifully proportioned transparent vessel crowned by a dramatic black stopper. Look again and a second black form descends inside the vessel, creating a striking dialogue between exterior and interior, object and reflection.

Pittsburgh-born Zachary Layhew began working with glass at just 14 years old through Pittsburgh Glass Center's Teen Boot Camp. Today, he is an accomplished artist and instructor whose technically ambitious practice combines glassblowing, coldworking, reheating, and assembly. Inspired in part by Baroque art and Cubism, Layhew uses line, pattern, depth, and dimensionality to create work that rewards close looking.

There is a particularly wonderful full-circle story here: a teenager who discovered glass at PGC is now contributing sophisticated work of his own to support the place where his career began.

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 12 x 30 x 12

Yellow/gray symmetrical composition by Ian Chadwick

Precision becomes hypnotic in Ian Chadwick's Yellow/Gray Symmetrical Composition. Constructed from deconstructed striped stringer sheets, this kiln-formed vessel radiates outward in an intricate geometry of yellow, black, white, and gray. The pattern seems to shift between Art Deco architecture, Op Art, and a kaleidoscope frozen at exactly the right instant.

Born on the Isle of Wight and trained in fine art and sculpture, Chadwick has long been fascinated by geometry and symmetry. After working in stained glass, he taught himself glass fusing and kiln-forming, eventually developing the meticulous pattern-based vocabulary for which he is known.

The technical control behind this work is remarkable, but its immediate pleasure is simple: your eye cannot stop moving through it. Place it where the light can reach it and this compact object becomes an entire visual environment.

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 10 x 10 x 1.5

Gold Square by Henry Halem

A tiny gold square glows at the center of Henry Halem's Gold Square, surrounded by successive fields of gray, brilliant red, black, and a vigorously scratched surface. The composition is deceptively simple: part painting, part glass object, and part meditation on color, texture, and precious material.

Halem occupies an important place in the history of American studio glass. He studied with Harvey Littleton at the University of Wisconsin, founded the glass program at Kent State University, taught there for 29 years, and was a founder -- and the first president -- of the Glass Art Society. Generations of artists know him not only through his artwork, but also through his influential teaching and writing.

For PGC collectors, there is another connection: Halem was honored at one of Pittsburgh Glass Center's earliest Meltdown events. This is a chance to own a work by someone who helped build the field itself.

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 16 x 16 x 2

Glamour Legs Girdle by Susan Taylor Glasgow

Susan Taylor Glasgow transforms one of fashion history's most restrictive undergarments into something simultaneously delicate, witty, beautiful, and impossible to wear. Glamour Legs Girdle combines translucent blue glass, corset-like black detailing, floral imagery, and even garter straps in a wall-mounted sculpture from her celebrated Glamour Legs series.

Before becoming a glass artist, Taylor Glasgow worked as a seamstress. She later developed an ingenious process of fusing and shaping thin glass panels and then literally stitching them together. Her work frequently borrows the visual language of 1950s domesticity and femininity to examine expectations placed upon women. The contradiction is irresistible: a material we think of as rigid and breakable behaves like fabric, while an intimate garment becomes sculpture.

Clever, beautifully crafted, and unmistakably Susan Taylor Glasgow, this is a piece people will want to talk about.

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 2" x 12" x 16"

Iridescent Bowl Entity 2411 by Katherine Gray

What color is this bowl? The answer changes every time you move. Katherine Gray's Iridescent Bowl Entity 2411 shifts through rose, violet, blue, gold, and green as light travels across its velvety surface. The restrained form allows the extraordinary optical effect to become the subject of the work itself.

Gray is an internationally respected artist, educator, curator, and writer whose work explores glass as a material that is at once ubiquitous and almost invisible. She is a Fellow of the American Craft Council, recipient of Pilchuck Glass School's Libensky-Brychtova Award, and familiar to millions of viewers as the Resident Evaluator on Netflix's Blown Away.

And here is the best fun fact: the iridescent coating Gray uses employs technology originally developed for NASA spacecraft windows. She loves that this space-age process mimics the shimmering surfaces found on ancient glass buried for thousands of years -- past and future meeting in one luminous object.

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 10 x 5 x 13

Murrine Form by Hayden Wilson

Hayden Wilson's Murrine Form turns pattern into sculpture. Black blocks float within a dense network of fine gray lines and flashes of deep amber, while horizontal carving breaks the vessel's surface into subtly shifting bands. The closer you look, the more complicated the structure becomes.

Wilson is a second-generation glass artist based in Western North Carolina who grew up immersed in the glass community. His practice ranges from tableware and lighting to one-of-a-kind sculptural vessels, combining deep technical knowledge with an unusually broad approach to design. Murrine is among glassmaking's most demanding pattern techniques: colored glass is assembled into rods, stretched, sliced to reveal a cross-sectional design, and then recombined into a larger work. In Wilson's hands, that centuries-old vocabulary feels distinctly contemporary -- graphic, architectural, and tactile.

A sophisticated piece for the collector who

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 9 x 19 x 4

Cane Platter by Adam Holtzinger

Sometimes virtuosity whispers. Adam Holtzinger's Cane Platter is almost entirely clear, yet fine white lines spiral concentrically through the broad form, gathering into a mesmerizing vortex at its center.

Holtzinger is a Brooklyn-based artist, designer, teacher, and one of the most accomplished technical glassmakers working today. A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, he co-founded KEEP Brooklyn and has produced work for leading artists, designers, architects, and museums while maintaining his own artistic practice. He has taught internationally at institutions including Pilchuck, Penland, Aalto University, the Corning Museum of Glass, and Pittsburgh Glass Center.

The restraint of this platter is precisely what makes it so impressive. Its elegant spiral records the movement of molten glass itself -- an object that appears quiet from across the room and astonishing when you come close.

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 17 x 4 x 15

Guiro Bottle Pair by Eric DePan

Eric DePan's Guiro Bottle Pair combines sophisticated layered color with rhythmic carving inspired by the ridged percussion instrument of the same name. DePan first builds layers of color through a demanding "stuff-cup" glassblowing process, blows each vessel to form, and then moves to the carving lathe, cutting repeated grooves across the surface. Those cuts reveal buried colors while also creating a tactile, potentially percussive surface.

Born in Houston, DePan pursued glass through programs at Penland, Haystack, and the Corning Museum of Glass, followed by work experiences that took him from Alaska to Murano, Toyama, Japan, and Sam Stang's Augusta Glass Studio. The pair is particularly satisfying together: related but not identical, one dark and compact, the other elongated and olive green. They turn rhythm, repetition, color, texture -- and even the idea of sound -- into sculpture.

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 17/12 x 5 x 5

El Angel by Robert Mickelsen

Robert Mickelsen has spent more than 50 years pushing flameworked glass into territory few artists imagined possible. El Angel shows that restless experimentation continuing into the digital age. The sculpture was first designed virtually in Blender, the 3-D modeling and animation program, and only afterward translated into lampworked borosilicate glass. Mickelsen is very clear about one contemporary detail: no AI was used in either the digital design or the making of the glass sculpture. The resulting object feels wonderfully otherworldly. Turquoise tendrils rise and curl around a central body punctuated with white spheres, while multiple pairs of brilliant white wings transform the structure into a fantastical mechanical angel.

Mickelsen's work is represented in major collections including the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery, Corning Museum of Glass, Carnegie Museum of Art, and Museum of Arts and Design. For longtime PGC supporters, he is also family: Mickelsen was an Art on Fire honoree in 2010.

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 7 x 12 x 7

High Volume by John Miller

John Miller believes more can definitely be more. High Volume takes the elegant proportions of the traditional Venetian goblet and turns the volume all the way up. A generous transparent ruby cup balances above a bulbous pink knop, a vivid purple stem, and a broad matching foot. At this scale, an object associated with the dinner table becomes architecture.

Miller is famous for dramatically oversized blown-glass sculptures inspired by American popular culture -- giant goblets, hamburgers, French fries, donuts, and fountain drinks. His work combines formidable hot-shop skill with the wit and exuberance of Pop Art. He has exhibited internationally, spent decades teaching and working at Pilchuck Glass School, and is represented in collections including the Corning Museum of Glass, Museum of Arts and Design, and Museum of Glass.

It is impossible to look at High Volume without smiling -- which is exactly the point. This is serious glassmaking that refuses to take itself too seriously.

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 14 x 32 x 14

Murrini Stack by Nick Mount

A stack of three colorful cylinders seems precariously balanced in Nick Mount's Murrini Stack, but beneath its playful personality lies nearly five decades of glassmaking mastery.

Mount is one of the foundational figures of Australian studio glass. Introduced to the medium in the early 1970s, he and his partner Pauline established Victoria's first private hot-glass studio and helped build an Australian glass movement with international reach. His work draws deeply from Venetian traditions while remaining witty, idiosyncratic, and unmistakably his own. Here, three individually patterned forms -- amber and yellow, smoky gray and white, and warm brown and white -- lean and balance like an abstract totem. The repeated murrini patterns create visual continuity while each section retains its own personality.

There is also a special PGC connection: Mount was Pittsburgh Glass Center's 2025 Art on Fire Honorary Artist. For anyone who celebrated with us last year, this piece carries a little extra history.

Northlands Platter by Amanda Simmons

Amanda Simmons doesn't simply shape glass in the kiln -- she collaborates with gravity. In Northlands Platter, hundreds of tiny marks spiral outward from the center in rings of yellow, gray, black, and white. The broad, softly undulating form feels simultaneously geological, botanical, and topographical: a cross-section of a tree, ripples across water, or an aerial view of cultivated land.

The Scotland-based artist works primarily with glass powders, carefully controlling mass, heat, color, and time so that the material stretches and changes translucency as it moves in the kiln. After firing, she uses extensive coldworking -- including sandblasting, hand lapping, and engraving -- to refine the finished object. Simmons has exhibited internationally at venues including Collect, SOFA Chicago, Bellevue Arts Museum, Bullseye Projects, London Glassblowing, and Pittsburgh Glass Center.

This is a work that changes with illumination and viewing angle. Give it light and space, and its intricate surface seems to begin moving again.

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 21 x 2 x 17

Love Bird from the Diamond Cut Series by Richard Royal

Richard Royal's Love Bird appears caught in motion. Dark glass sweeps forward into a beak-like point while a series of dramatic cuts opens the surface to reveal layers of pale blue, white, pink, and violet hidden within. Royal conceived his Diamond Cut Series as a metaphor for self-exploration. Multiple colors are layered one over another to create a vessel -- the "self" -- and a diamond saw is then used to cut through the exterior. Like the rings revealed inside a tree, those openings expose what had previously been invisible. Over time, Royal says, the series has evolved toward joy, spontaneity, and a greater integration of the inner and outer self.

Royal began at Pilchuck Glass School in 1978 and later became one of Dale Chihuly's principal assistants before establishing an internationally recognized practice of his own. PGC audiences may remember him as our 2017 Art on Fire Honorary Artist. This is Royal at his most sculptural, elegant, and exuberant.

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 11.5" x 8" x 13"

Awaiting Spring - Pale Blue by Emma Varga

Emma Varga creates images inside glass. In Awaiting Spring -- Pale Blue, dozens of delicate blue and violet blossoms rise through a thick transparent slab, their stems multiplying and overlapping as though a living plant has somehow been suspended in water -- or frozen in time. Tiny bubbles scattered throughout the glass heighten the sense of an underwater world.

Varga developed an extraordinarily labor-intensive multiple-layer fusing technique in which thousands of small glass elements are cut, assembled, and fired in stages to construct three-dimensional imagery within transparent glass. Born in the former Yugoslavia, she worked in the glass industry for two decades before settling in Sydney, Australia, where the colors and landscapes of her new home transformed her artistic practice. Part of Varga's environmentally inspired Blue World series, Awaiting Spring is both beautiful and quietly urgent: an intimate ecosystem rendered in a material that can preserve a moment seemingly forever.

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 2 x 15 x 10

The Valley by April Surgent

From across the room, The Valley could be mistaken for a haunting black-and-white photograph: winter trees frame an open sky, traffic lights hover near the horizon, and two birds cross overhead. Move closer and the illusion becomes astonishing. The image has been engraved into glass.

April Surgent is one of the leading contemporary practitioners of cameo engraving. In 2003, Czech master engraver Jiri Harcuba introduced her to the centuries-old technique, which Surgent has spent more than two decades pushing into distinctly contemporary territory. Her work is rooted in close observation and scientific research, particularly climate change and vulnerable ecosystems. Her fieldwork has taken her to Antarctica with the National Science Foundation and to Hawaii working alongside NOAA researchers. Her work is held by institutions including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Corning Museum of Glass.

Quiet, atmospheric, and technically extraordinary, The Valley rewards both the immediate emotional response of an image and the wonder of discovering how it was actually made.

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 23 x 2 x 22

Winter Spirit Globe Rattle by Preston Singletary

Few artists have changed the possibilities of contemporary Indigenous glass as profoundly as Preston Singletary. Winter Spirit Globe Rattle is a commanding example of Singletary's fusion of blown glass with the visual language of his Tlingit heritage. Deep blue glass becomes the ground for boldly sand-carved formline imagery, its symmetrical eyes, ovoids, and flowing shapes wrapping continuously around the spherical form.

Singletary began blowing glass in Seattle in 1982 and later worked in Benjamin Moore's studio alongside artists including Dante Marioni, Richard Royal, and Lino Tagliapietra. His artistic direction changed when he began incorporating Tlingit stories and designs drawn from his own cultural lineage. Today his work is internationally recognized and held by institutions including the British Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

This 2009 work offers a chance to acquire an important piece by an artist who helped establish an entirely new conversation between Indigenous tradition and contemporary glass.

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 12 x 6 x 14

Fall Fire in Rouge Flambe and Mandarin by 2026 Honorary Artist Amber Cowan

Amber Cowan gives forgotten American glass a spectacular second life. Under a clear glass dome, Fall Fire in Rouge Flambe and Mandarin erupts into a dense fantasy landscape of fiery red, orange, coral, and yellow. Flowers, leaves, curls, beads, and mysterious organic forms pile one upon another until the sculpture seems almost to be growing before your eyes.

Cowan is celebrated for transforming discarded and obsolete American pressed glass into elaborate sculptures that explore memory, domestic life, collecting, and the disappearance of the American glass industry. She sources material from scrapyards connected to defunct factories as well as flea markets, antique stores, and donations, then combines flameworking, glassblowing, hot sculpting, and found glass into extraordinary new compositions. She received a United States Artists Fellowship in 2021. And this one carries special significance: Amber Cowan is Pittsburgh Glass Center's 2026 Art on Fire Honorary Artist. Fall Fire isn't merely part of this year's auction--it is a centerpiece of the celebration.

Dimensions (in. WxHxD): 8 x 12 x 8