Marvin Lipofsky has been one of the stalwarts of the American studio glass movement, both as an artist and a teacher. He has demonstrated a willingness to explore the unusual in terms of surface and coloring, and he has often incorporated local traditions, colors, techniques, and materials in his work on visits to particular places. The example seen here began at the Crystalex Hantich factory in Novy Bor, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic), where the basic form was created with the assistance of resident glassmaster Petr Novotny. Invited to Czechoslovakia by well-known glass artists Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova, Lipofsky set about to give the works he would create there some of the distinctive character of the region. He searched the premises of the factory and its site for various pieces of wood and metal and used them as either part of the mold or to alter the molten glass as the blower was forming it. More than twenty of the rough pieces of glass were shipped back to Lipofsky