Trained as a painter and sculptor, Dorothy Hafner (American, b. 1952) was a ceramics designer when she was started working with glass. She makes kiln-formed and fused glass "collages" whose colors and shapes are inspired by the sea. Because she does not blow glass herself, her series of "tesserae" vessels, of which Aurora is one, was made with a glassblowing team headed by the renowned Venetian glass master Lino Tagliapietra (Italian, b. 1934).