Born in Vienna, Henry Glass was trained as an architect at the Technical University of Vienna. He found early success designing interiors and furnishings until Hitler’s invasion. He was denounced, sent to Dachau, then transferred to Buchenwald. He survived and was released in 1939.

He immigrated to New York City in 1939, then moved to Chicago in 1942 where he worked as a designer of office furniture for the war effort and studied under László Moholy-Nagy and György Kepes at the Institute of Design. He soon established a career as a furniture and product designer and opened his own design firm, Henry P. Glass Associates, in 1946.

Glass convinced the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to create an industrial design department in 1946 where he served as a professor for more than twenty years.

He was awarded 52 US patents. He was a Fellow of the Industrial Designers Society of America and received numerous other awards. Several of his pieces are on permanent display in the American Art Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.

2003