James Thornton

James Thornton began his career in 1993 under the instruction of his uncle, a glazier who had trained in Germany. What started as a summer job became a thirty-year education in the behavior of glass under heat, pressure, and time.

His specialty — curved and bent structural glass — requires equipment and expertise that fewer than a dozen studios in the United States possess. The process involves heating flat glass to near-liquid temperatures and carefully forming it over custom-made molds, a procedure that can take weeks for a single panel.

Thornton's work appears in significant custom residences throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. He has been specified by name by three architecture firms whose principals have called his fabrication "impossible to replicate."

He currently operates a twelve-person studio in Minneapolis and mentors four active apprentices, two of whom came through the Mastercraft program.