A customer contacts you eight months after buying a large blown glass vase from your studio. The vase shattered — not from being dropped, but apparently on its own — and shards injured someone in their home. They're threatening to sue.
Is this covered by your insurance?
If you have product liability coverage, the answer is almost certainly yes. If you only have studio general liability without a product liability extension, the answer depends on the specifics — and may be no.
This guide explains how product liability works for glass artists.
Product liability is insurance that covers you when a product you made, sold, or distributed causes injury or property damage after it leaves your control. It covers:
Critically, it covers these claims regardless of where the piece was sold (your studio, a gallery, Etsy, a craft show) and regardless of how much time has passed since the sale (within the policy period).
Glassblowing creates a specific product liability risk that doesn't exist in most other art forms: improper annealing causes delayed failure.
When glass is cooled too quickly, internal stresses develop. The piece may look and feel perfect. It may pass initial inspection. But days, weeks, or months later, those internal stresses can cause the piece to fracture spontaneously.
If that fracture happens on a kitchen counter and shards injure someone, the liability follows the piece back to you. An insurance adjuster for the homeowner will investigate whether the piece was properly annealed.
Even if you annealed properly, you may face a claim — and your product liability coverage is what pays for your defense, even if the claim is ultimately unfounded.
Standard general liability policies cover "premises and operations" — things that happen at or because of your business location and activities. A visitor who slips in your studio. A student injured during a class. Property damage that occurs during your operations.
Product liability is coverage for what happens after your operations are complete — after the piece leaves your hands. Some GL policies include "products and completed operations" as part of a standard policy. Others don't, or they cover it with sublimits that are insufficient for the exposure.
Read your policy carefully. Look for "products and completed operations" in the coverage section and check whether there's a separate aggregate limit for these claims.
A particularly important situation for many glass artists: pieces consigned to galleries.
When you consign work to a gallery:
Your product liability coverage responds to these claims wherever the piece ends up being sold, as long as the claim arises during your coverage period.
For most individual glass artists and small studios:
For studios with significant production volume or pieces that sell at high prices, higher limits may be warranted.
The simplest approach for most glass artists: make sure your general liability policy explicitly includes "products and completed operations" with meaningful limits. This is typically a standard inclusion in policies designed for craft businesses, though the limits and exclusions vary.
If you sell high-value pieces, teach classes, and also have a studio open to visitors, you're dealing with multiple liability exposures — a specialist can make sure all of them are covered without gaps.
Get a free product liability quote for your glass art business — we'll review your current coverage and identify any gaps.
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