A truly great American glass artist, Maurice Heaton was a third-generation glass worker. He was born in 1900 in Neuchatel, Switzerland, and came to America with his family in 1914. Maurice worked with his father, Clement, designing and building stained-glass windows for many churches throughout New York City. Work dried up during the Depression so in the early 1930’s Maurice began experimenting with enameling on glass. During the next 50 years, he created a beautiful body of work that included bent enameled glass tableware, lighting and backlit murals. Charles Flickinger apprenticed with Maurice from 1983 until 1989 and his enameled tableware are designed and executed with Maurice’s techniques. In his lifetime, Maurice blacksmithed over 100 steel molds and he left them with Charles. These molds are used every day in shaping Flickinger’s tableware.
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Hall of Fame
Maurice Heaton’s work is in the permanent collections of in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Corning Museum, and the Museum of Art and Design, and select pieces from Charles Flickinger’s private collection are on display at the Flickinger Glassworks, Inc. showroom.
In Heaton’s heyday, art critics called his work entirely different from any of the familiar types
of craftsmanship in glass and modern art with
a craft based on engineering.