Marvin Lipofsky (1938-2016) was born in Barrington, Illinois on September 1 to parents Henry and Mildred Lipofsky, themselves children of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine and Russia. Growing up in the small town of Barrington, Lipofsky began to take art classes when he was about twelve years old. In order to do so, Lipofsky would travel over an hour by train to Chicago, where he encountered the rich art and urban landscapes of the city. Lipofsky earned his BFA in Industrial Design from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, with the intention of ensuring he would have a paying job at the end of his studies. Nevertheless, Lipofsky took all available sculpture classes and a ceramics course taught by potter David Shaner. Lipofsky continued his studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where his ceramics class with Harvey Littleton first introduced Lipofsky to the world of glass. While Lipofsky continued to study ceramics at university, he frequented Littleton's small furnace to blow glass. Littleton, as a ceramics artist who spearheaded the American Studio Glass movement by hosting the Toledo workshops, continued to advise Lipofsky. After finishing his graduate studies, he joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley to teach glass for one semester. Lipofsky stayed at the university for several years, building the university's glass program. He also founded the glass department at the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1967. Lipofsky taught in many institutions in addition to UC, Berkeley, traveling extensively throughout the United States and internationally. Indeed, a major part of Lipofsky's artistic process involved working with glass masters in their hot shops, which Lipofsky would then finish in his own studio. In 2009, Lipofsky received the Glass Art Society's Lifetime Achievement Award. His work is in many institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Arts and Design, Oakland Museum of California, the Renwick Gallery, Corning Museum of Glass, among others. Lipofsky died on January 15, 2016, in Berkeley, California.