"Hen thinking of Pittsburgh, what usually comes to mind is a turn-of- the-century juggernaut in the steel industry. In 1901, after buying out Carnegie Steel Company, J.P. Morgan and Elbert H. Gary created the largest steel company in America. By 1911 the city of Pittsburgh was producing nearly half the nation's steel. However, long before Carnegie ever came to town, the region was the country's leader in glass production and continued to be so for decades. Indeed, the Steel City could just as easily have been dubbed America's "Glass City."

In the years since the steel industry's collapse, the city of Pittsburgh has shifted its economic base to the arts. The Pittsburgh Glass Center (PGC), founded in 2001 by Kathleen Mulcahy and Ron Desmett, is dedicated to teaching, creating and promoting art glass. In the process, it has helped to brush away much of the dust left from the steel industry, re-exposing the city's rich glass roots.


"We're committed to creating a community of glass artists in Pittsburgh," says Paige Ilkhanipour, Marketing Director at PGC. In the five short years since its inception, the PGC has attracted artists from around the world and has enticed more than two dozen artists to relocate their studios to Pittsburgh."