Dominick Labino

Dominick Labino
Labino from his 1968 book "Visual Art in Glass"
Born	December 4, 1910 Fairmount City, Pennsylvania
Died	January 10, 1987 Grand Rapids, Ohio
Nationality	U.S. citizen
Occupation	Glass researcher and scientist, fine artist
Known for	Research and development of industrial glass and glass art

Dominick Labino (1910–1987) was an internationally known scientist, inventor, artist and master craftsman in glass. Labino's art works in glass are in the permanent collections of more than 100 museums throughout the world. Labino held over 60 glass-oriented patents in the United States.

Dominick Labino was trained as an engineer at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and began his professional career at Owens-Illinois, Inc., a glass manufacturing plant in Clarion, Pennsylvania.

In 1944, Dominick left Owens-Illinois to pursue the fiber glass industry with long-time business partner and Executive VP of I-O, Randolph H Barnard. Barnard formed Glass Fibers, Inc. in Toledo, Labino was the head of Research and Development. In 1958, Johns-Manville acquired Glass Fibers, Inc., creating Johns-Manville's modern fiber glass division. Labino stayed on as Vice President and Director of Research and development until his retirement in 1965.

Labino continued to serve as a research consultant until 1975. Labino was an innovator in the processes and machines used in forming glass fibers. Three of his inventions employing fiberglass were used in the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft to insulate them against extreme temperatures.

According to art historian Martha Drexler Lynn, "Labino had a life-long love of tools, inventing and problem-solving which he coupled with a passion for artistic endeavors..." His interest in blowing glass began in the 1930s, when he ran the Owens-Illinois milk bottling plant. There he had a laboratory in which he created glass formulas. In 1940, his predecessor at the plant, Ben Alderson, showed Labino how to blow glass. Labino later blew glass as a hobby; at Johns-Manville he built a home glass furnace at which to pursue the craft. An early project was a glass paperweight that he created in 1958 for a friend's retirement. By 1960 he had melted a batch of glass and created a primitive blowpipe.

Labino and Harvey Littleton, with whom Labino would stage a ground-breaking glassblowing workshop at the Toledo Museum of Art in 1962, met during the time that Littleton was a ceramics instructor at the Toledo Museum of Art School of Design (1949 to 1951) and Labino was taking evening craft classes there.