Klaus Moje, an internationally known artist and influential teacher, pioneered studio glass in Europe and later in Australia, where he founded an important university program in glass at the Canberra School of Art. Moje, who moved from Germany to Australia in the early 1980s, was profoundly influenced by the colors and landscape of Australia. He began to make abstract paintings in fused glass, which he exhibited as panels or "rolled up" onto a blowpipe and formed into vessels. The "Niijima" series of vessels was begun at the well-known glass school on the island of Niijima in Japan.