Bri’oni started blowing glass in San Francisco in the late sixties and hawking it on street corners. Just like
all of the early glass artists in this country in the 1960s, he was mostly self-taught. Bri’oni believes "it’s our
responsibility as artists and designers to entertain this planet with new, wonderful and beautiful things.”
As the owner and “director of glassology” at Bri’oni Art Glass, Bri’oni’s contribution to the American glass movement
has not only been his own unique work in hot glass, but also his development of the Sausalito Art Center in Sausalito,
California. Through two National Endowment of the Arts grants and a Tiffany Foundation grant, Bri’oni was able to
develop the prominent art center and design electric glass furnaces to function in a production environment. The
Sausalito Art Center has played a crucial role in bringing art glass to its current popular status. Bri’oni’s work
is displayed in the permanent collection of The Chicago Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution.
