James Houston, who died Sunday in New London, Conn., at age 83, was an artist, writer, and adventurer who introduced Inuit art to collectors worldwide and subsequently became a master sculptor for Steuben Glass.

Houston initially worked as an artist and later served as a government administrator of West Baffin Island during the 1940s and 1950s, while living among the Inuit. He also served as the first art-purchasing agent for the Hudson’s Bay Company during that period, and encouraged artisans to adopt the printmaking techniques for which they would become world famous. Inuit tradition dictated that no given design could be executed twice, but the use of an engraving stone was permissible.

After 14 years of dog sledding, seal hunting, igloo building, art making, and art-buying – years that included such adventures as falling through the ice on several occasions, “wife sharing,” and nearly starving to death – Houston accepted a job offer to move to Manhattan and work for Steuben, in 1962. Arctic themes remained his specialty, although he produced other famous sculptures in glass, including renderings of scenes from fairy tales such as “The Sword in the Stone” and “The Frog Prince.”

At around the same time, Houston began producing children’s books based on Inuit folktales he had heard during long Arctic nights. Later, Houston produced several award-winning documentaries and turned to novel writing. “The White Dawn” (1971) became a Book of the Month Club selection, and Houston wrote the screenplay for the 1976 film, but it did not do well at the box office. “Inuit liked it an awful lot,” he told the Toronto Star in 1995. “I can tell you that every Inuk on earth has seen it six times.”

(Houston often told interviewers that he loathed the neological Inuit – Inuk in the singular – and claimed that they were universally known as Eskimos while he lived above 60 degrees N.)

Houston was born in Toronto, where his father worked as a clothing importer, and had a long-standing familiarity with Canada’s Pacific Northwest, often bringing home moose-hide moccasins for his children. The family summered on a lake near an Ojibwa reservation, and a friendship with an elderly Indian had a formative impact on Houston, in addition to teaching him how to provoke a groundhog to whistle.

Between art studies in Toronto and Paris, Houston served in the Toronto Scottish Regiment of the Canadian Army in World War II, where he reacquainted himself with native art while on northern shore patrols. While drifting around Canada searching for subjects to draw, Houston ended up in northern Ontario, the outpost of Moose Factory, where he bummed a ride with a bush pilot headed to Eskimo country on a mission of medical mercy. After he plunked down in a remote settlement on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay, Houston abruptly decided to stay. His only possessions, he later recalled, were a sleeping bag, a sketch pad, and a can of peaches. Despite not speaking a word of the local language, he was quickly invited to spend the night in a family bed in an igloo, and made friends easily by presenting his subjects with portraits. When they reciprocated with soapstone sculptures, Houston was thunderstruck. “I swear I could somehow see the whole future, not only to this day but far beyond my life, children coming to museums in the year 2000,” Houston told the Montreal Gazette in 2002. “I never doubted it for an instant.”

After returning to Toronto with a satchel of samples, Houston was chartered as an agent for the Hudson Bay Company. He learned the rudiments of arctic survival, while bringing a new means of raising cash to the Inuit. Soon, he moved north with his wife, Alma, and they built a home and began raising their two children as Inuit. Inuit art became known internationally, Houston became a minor celebrity, and in 1955, he was named Canadian administrator of West Baffin Island, a 65,000-square-mile territory inhabited by 343 souls. They called him Saomik, “the left-handed one,” or sometimes “the Man.” His wife was called, Arnakotak, “the long one;” Alma was tall. To encourage a high level of production, Houston purchased nearly everything presented to him by native carvers, although not all of it was of high quality. In his memoirs, he tells of packing inferior specimens onto a hand sled in the dead of night and heading out onto the frozen bay to dump them down a tide crack into the sea.

The story of Inuit printmaking, often told, goes that a sculptor named Osuitok pointed to Houston’s pack of cigarettes and commented that it must be laborious and dull to produce the same image repeatedly. A light went on, and after taking time out to study printmaking in Japan, Houston introduced the technique to the Inuit, and their art, in turn, to the world.

By 1962, when he finally left for Manhattan and Steuben, Houston had few regrets about leaving behind the mosquito-filled summers, over-close winters, and treacherous ice floes. The invitation came from Arthur Houghton Jr., president of Steuben Glass and also of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who met Houston while on vacation in Canada in 1959. From the beginning, Houston grasped the close aesthetic connection between glass and ice, and soon his Steuben work became wildly popular. In addition to smaller sculptures reproduced in quantity, he created spectacular pieces, such as “Aurora Borealis,” a 70-foot work of polished prismatic spheres at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary. He continued to work as a graphic artist as well, illustrating the 17 children’s books he wrote. He also produced three volumes of unexpurgated memoirs, including “Confessions of an Igloo Dweller” (1995).

Alma and Houston divorced in 1967, and he soon remarried. He maintained a fishing retreat in British Columbia, and for several years raised sheep at Exeter, R.I. Later, he and his wife, Alice Watson Houston, purchased a home at Stonington, Conn., built by an 18th-century sea captain and supposedly later the residence of the subject of “Whistler’s Mother.”

James Archibald Houston

Born June 12, 1921 in Toronto, Canada; died April 17 at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital, New London, Conn.; survived by his wife, Alice Watson Houston, and sons, James and John, and four grandchildren.