[2]: 6  Expected by his father to enter the field of physics, Littleton instead chose a career in art, gaining recognition first as a ceramist and later as a glassblower and sculptor in glass.

Imbued with the prevailing view at the time that glassblowing could only be done on the factory floor, separated from the designer at his desk, Littleton aimed to put it within the reach of the individual studio artist.

[5]: 110–111  Exploring the inherent qualities of the medium, he worked in series with simple forms to draw attention to the complex interplay of transparent glass with multiple overlays of thin color.

[5]: 99, 130–134 Littleton worked as an independent glassblower and sculptor until chronic back problems forced him to abandon hot glass in 1990, and he continued his creative interest in vitreography well beyond that.

Director of Research at the time of Harvey's birth (and later a Vice President of Corning), Dr. Littleton is remembered today as the developer of Pyrex glassware and for his work on tempered glass.

When he was twelve, Harvey and his siblings were at the glassworks watching at the time of the failure of the first casting of the two-hundred inch mirror for the Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory.

[Notes 1] His interest in art developed during this time, and he took life drawing and sculpture courses through an extension program at Elmira College.

There he studied metalwork with Harry Bertoia and sculpture with Marshall Fredericks, and worked part-time as a studio assistant to the aging Carl Milles.

[Notes 2] Following the Pearl Harbor attack, Littleton tried to volunteer in the Coast Guard, the Air Force, and the Marines, but was rejected because of his poor eyesight.

With his father's encouragement Littleton submitted a proposal to Corning to create a workshop within the factory to research the aesthetic properties of industrial glass.

[5]: 12,  [6]: 10  After obtaining an equipment order from the Goat's Nest Ceramic Studio in Ann Arbor, Littleton began teaching evening pottery classes there.

[5]: 22–23 In 1949, Littleton enrolled under the GI Bill as a graduate student in ceramics at Cranbrook Academy of Art, studying under Finnish potter Maija Grotell.

His production as a potter focused on functional stoneware that he sold in Chicago-area art fairs and in galleries from Chicago to New York City.

A university research grant allowed him to visit Europe to study the influence of Islamic culture on contemporary Spanish pottery.

[9] Upon his return to the university and his Verona, Wisconsin studio Littleton began melting small batches of glass in his ceramics kiln, using hand-thrown stoneware bowls as crucibles.

As a result of these ongoing experiments, the ACC asked him to chair a panel on glass at its Third National Conference, at Lake George, New York, in 1958.

[10]: 262  By the time the ACC convened its fourth conference in 1961, Littleton not only presented a paper on his own work in glass but also exhibited a sculpture made of three faceted pieces of cullet that he had melted, formed and carved in the previous year.

Wittman had sent a letter to a number of ceramists in the U.S. inviting them to participate in the workshop, and asked Norm Schulman, the pottery instructor at the museum school, to facilitate the arrangements.

Labino suggested converting the furnace to a day tank, which would have a larger capacity, and provided some borosilicate marbles to melt instead of mixing a formula.

Even so, from the standpoint of what was learned about how to build and operate a studio/teaching facility, the two Toledo workshops were a resounding success, and have been recognized as the genesis of the American studio glass movement.

Trained as a fine artist in the academies of Germany, he was largely self-taught as a glass blower and at the time produced his work with the help of the factory's craftsmen.

[5]: 65 Through the fall 1962 and spring 1963 semesters, Littleton taught glass in a garage at his Verona farm to six students under an independent study program.

[5]: 72 Throughout these years a steady stream of visitors from elsewhere in the United States, and from Europe, came to Madison, where they observed and learned, and occasionally demonstrated their own skills.

For some it was a rallying cry to discover the inherent possibilities of a "new" medium for the artist; for others the statement expressed nothing more than arrogant disdain for the timeless value of craftsmanship.

His breakthrough to non-functional form came in 1963 when, with no purpose in mind, he remelted and finished a glass piece that he had earlier smashed in a fit of pique.

As Littleton recounts in his book Glassblowing: A Search for Form, he brought the object into the house where "it aroused such antipathy in my wife that I looked at it much more closely, finally deciding to send it to an exhibition.

Shortly after Eisch's departure from a several-week period as artist-in-residence at Wisconsin in fall 1967, Littleton realized that he had unconsciously adopted his friend's strongly personal figural style in his own work, and began a radical change.

[5]: 73 Allowing the pull of gravity to stretch and bend hot glass while on the blowpipe or punty led Littleton to his "Folded Forms" and "Loops" series, which continued until 1979.

[2]: 64  These were followed, in 1978, by Littleton's Solid Geometry series, in which heavy cased glass forms were cut into trapezoidal, spheroid and ovoid shapes and highly polished.

He received a research grant from the university in 1975 to continue this work, and his first prints from this process were shown in a show at the Madison Art Center.