Dominick Labino was born in Grand Rapids, Ohio in 1910, a fact celebrated by a historical marker there, near Front Street. He was a man of many parts, a classic American inventor, a chemist, employee in industry, painter, sculptor, glass-workerjack of all trades.

During the late 1940s and 1950s, he painted in oil and watercolor, while working in metal casting, wood sculpture and enamel jewelry. In 1963, he began working with hot, blown glass as an art medium, designing and building his own furnaces, annealing ovens, glass-blowing tools and finishing equipment, and his laboratory was equipped for testing the properties of glass. Labino formulated his own glass mixtures, achieving unique colors and visual effects.

He designed an...