Toots Zynsky

Toots Zynsky is an American glass artist who pioneered a distinctive technique she calls filet de verre, in which thousands of fine threads of colored glass are arranged, fused and slumped into vessel forms rather than being blown in the traditional manner. The resulting bowls and forms carry vivid, painterly bands of color that behave more like brushstrokes than glasswork, blurring the line between glass craft and abstract painting. A student of the influential glass program at the Rhode Island School of Design and an early participant in the studio glass movement, Zynsky helped push glass beyond its traditional decorative and functional roles into a medium for serious sculptural and painterly expression. Her work is held in major museum collections internationally and is regarded as some of the most technically innovative studio glass of recent decades.