The Legend of Bohemian Glass

Brief History of Bohemian Glass

 Glass making in the Czech lands has a thousand year, uninterrupted history in creativity and craftsmanship. The groundwork for success was laid at its very beginning. As the hall smelt master Hochstetter, himself a competitor to Czech glass making, stated at the end of the 16th Century stated, the Bohemia was a land „where the place and its naturalness itself is blessed with an abundance of materials necessary for manufacture", i.e. with wood for firing the kilns and for burning down to ashes, used then for producing potash, and copious amounts of quality silica and limestone. Bohemia also contains plenty of fire-resistant materials for ovens and pans, with energy created from mountain streams and brooks for turning grinding machines and crushers. Another main factor contributing to its success is its people with their craftsmanship, know-how and their rare sense for crystal and is usage as glass pearls, vessels and windows. Czech crystal makers first received attention for their work in the middle Ages. Czechs have influenced glass making in neighboring countries since the second half of the 16^th Century. It took another 100 years for cultivated Bohemian crystal, known for its excellent cut and engraving, to outshine Venetian crystal as well as crystal markets around Europe and in the Americas, at that time admired around the world. Through their own discoveries, they have influenced the world crystal culture more than once and have actively taken part in helping it to flourish. They were not only skilled teachers of glass making in both bordering countries as well as in far away lands, but perceptive students as well when it was necessary to conform and adjust discoveries to their own needs. They preferably developed handmade production - shaping and coloring melted glass mixtures in the smelts, and surface and refined etching, cut and mainly painting. They easily conformed to customer requirements in neighboring and distant countries. In the interest of developing traditional as well as new techniques and perfecting technical preparation, they began to build a technical glass making school system in the middle of the 19th Century. Today this school system is considered the best throughout the world. In the 1920s, they began to educate the first specialized glass creators at an arts university. They even developed machine production for construction, technical and packaging glass, and at the beginning of the 20th Century they were first in the world in industrial production of sheet glass... In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Czechoslovakia began with automated production of glass tableware and drinking glass. Today a significant advantage is advanced handmade production of metallurgical, etched, engraved and mainly painted glass, based on years of experience. No glass and crystal producer on earth can match as many techniques and technology in surface refinement of products used by the Czech producers under the labels BOHEMIA CRYSTAL and BOHEMIA GLASS. Studio creation is among the indisputable successes of modern Czech glass making based on mastery and invention. Some of these creators went beyond the abstract boundary between the so-called useful and free art. They created the first sculptures from glass and area compositions of an artistic quality comparable with works of leading sculptors and painters.

1. The Beginning of Bohemian Art Glass Expansion

 Crystal first came to the lands that today make up the Czech Republic at the start of the millennium, when mutual trading brought the first glass pearls from the Near East all the way to Central Europe. Molten glass was first processed here by the Celts (from about 400 BC to the time of Christ's birth). After they left, glass production was all but forgotten. The tradition was not renewed until the 9^th Century, when the Great Moravian Empire flourished. The first written record of glass production comes from the year 1162, connected with the activities of Reginard from Metz, abbot of the Sazava Monastery. The first cosmopolitan glassworks originated in the middle of the 13^th Century in the forests of the Ore and Lusatian Mountains along the border, as well as in the Bohemian Forest, although the first written materials confirming this only date back to the 14^th Century. The molten glass used by Czechs in the Middle Ages was made from a potash-calcareous mixture, nearly colorless but slightly yellow, brown or green, or even blue with the use of metallic oxides. In the second half of the 14^th Century and in the first half of the 15^th century they concentrated on producing Bohemian tall, thin goblets. By this time also certain churches decorated painted and lead-inlaid windows. In the years 1370 to 137T, the only glass mosaic of the „Final Judgment" in Central Europe was inlaid on the Gold Gate of Saint Vitus Cathedral at Prague Castle. The oldest written account of trading with Czech Glass is a contract from 1376 between Nicolas Queysser, a glassmaker from Vysoke, and Hanus from Hlohov. The first mentioning of Bohemian crystal in Mainz customs logs date from 1435 and 1450.

 2. Bohemian Glass on its way to the world

 In the 16^th Century, there were at least 34 smelting works producing glass, but Bohemian cups and goblets were not as light nor as elegant as those from Venice. They were decorated with diamond points performed by cuts and mainly multicolor fired enamel. At that time, several smelt masters from the Saxon side of the Ore Mountains moved to Bohemia. They first settled in the Lusatian and Jizera Mountains, then later they started to move into the western Ore Mountains, the Orlice Mountains, the Bohemian Forest and Moravia, to Klodzsko and Silesia. They soon adjusted to and flowed with their new surroundings. The admirer of Venetian crystal Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol, Brandenburg's elector Joachim Friedrich, and Emperor Rudolph II all took an interest in Czech glass making and glassmakers. At the turn of the 17th Century, Rudolph II invited leading scholars and artists to Prague, including precious stone cutters and glass etchers. One of them was Caspar Lehmann (1570-1622), author of the first signed and dated (1605) cut goblet with allegories of power, nobility and liberty (Potestas, Nobilitas, Libertas).

3. Bohemian Glass is now part of Art Glass World

 Bohemian crystal could regularly BC found in neighboring countries since the 16^th Century. At the turn of the 18^th Century, the quality of work of Bohemian glassmakers began to overshadow the once incomparable Venetian crystal. In 1725, only 4 of the previous 25 Mur glassworks remained in operation. Czech glassmakers produced from high-quality, mountain crystal reminiscent of glass from goblets and bottles, as well as large cups with lids and chalices in the shape of boats and tea pots. They decorated these items with etching and gold-inlaid ornamental and mainly figural decoration in Baroque style. Among the leading statements of glass art were double-walled and black-colored painted cups and goblets of Ignac Preisslcr (1676-1741). Traders also brought international respect to Bohemia crystal. The most important of these traders, Georg Franz Kreybich (1662-1736) from Kamenicky Senov, made over 30 trading journeys to all corners of Europe in the years 1682 to 1721. Later, glass traders organized themselves into companies, which by the mid 18th Century had established permanent representation in 54 European countries and six cities and harbors overseas. Czech glassmakers have also operated in Sweden and Germany since the mid 17th Century. Shortly thereafter, they moved into England, France, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Lotharingia, Italy, Belgium and Russia.

4. Bohemian glass in Rococo and Classicism periods

 In the mid 18th Century, glassmakers served the requirements of a new life and art style - Rococo. Harrach's glassworks in Novy Svet produced individual items and entire sets of milk glass, and decorated them with figures, flowers and ornamental motifs. The ancestor and follower of Giant Mountain grinders and painters, Johann Josef Mildner (1765-1808) successfully created Baroque double-walled glass in the south Austrian town of Gutenbrunn. The first Czech chandeliers in Venetian style from 1687-1693, as well as crystal hanging chandeliers after 1724 were first found in the Zakupy lordship Prachen in the region of Kamenicky Senov, where Josef Palme received the privilege to create them. Gradually they decorated the Palace at Versailles, Marly and Choisyand in other European cities. New hanging chandeliers were unveiled at the coronation ceremony in Prague of Maria Teresa in 1743, and are still produced today. The Stogar smelting works at Volary produced the first glass mirrors even before the Thirty Years War. Josef Count of Kinsky founded a mirror manufacturing works in 1756 under Sloup Castle in Northern Bohemia. They began exporting etched mirrors in the middle of the 1760s to Germany, Silesia, Denmark, Russia, Poland, Holland, Portugal and Turkey. The region of Jablonec became the production center for glass pearls and imitation precious stones in the middle of the 18^th Century. Glassmakers Johann Leopold Ricdel (1726-1800) also supplied jewelry raw materials and semi-finished products. He came to the Jizera Mountains in the mid-18^th Century in the service of his uncle J. J. Kittel, but he became independent soon thereafter. His ancestors lived and worked around Jablonec until 1945. The founder of foreign trade with goods from the Jablonec region (jewelry) was Johann Franz Schwan (1740-1812).

5. Bohemian Glass in the First Half of the 19^th Century

 The Napoleonic Wars eliminated the chances for access of Czech glass on markets in western and southern Europe as well as overseas and indirectly aided the domination of English etched leaded crystal. Czech glass makers could barely match them with glass and colored, painting, cutting and etching decorative glass in Biedermeier style. In Povelsko and later in Bor lived the legendary crystal trader, inventor and technological experimenter Friedrich Egermann (1777-1864). He produced glass objects decorated with yellow azure and other techniques. He became famous by using lythalines and inventing glass imitations of precious stones, but his most meaningful discovery was the red azure, made and admired even today. Harrach's glassworks in Novy Svet was among the best in all of Europe. Under the leadership of its administrator, Johann Pohl (1769-1850), they mixed quality crystal, molten glass similar to black and red hyalite, cuprous and gold rubies, and leaded and uranium crystal. The glassworks produced objects with sealed ceramic relief and smelted glass decorated in Venetian techniques. In 1817, Georg Franz August, Count of Buquoy (1781-1851) introduced the production of opaque black and later even red and marbled glass - hyalite in Jiffkovo Udoli between Nove Hrady and Tfebon. The Meyers and Johann Loetz also contributed to the flourishing of Bohemian Forest glass making in the first half of the 19^th Century. After Loetz's death, his wife Zuzana Loetz (1809-1879) ran the glassworks in Annin. After 1850, she purchased the glassworks in Klastersky Mlyn, which her grandson, Max Spaun, later transformed into one of the most prestigious glassworks in all of Europe at the turn of the 20^th Century. There were many glass engravers in northern and Western Europe. Some also worked in Germany, France, England and America. One glass engraver, portrait painter Dominik Bimann (1800-1857) outshone all the rest with his exceptional talent and attained results. The first technical and chemical glass producer in the world was Frantisek Kavalier (1796-1853). He began producing this glass in 1837 in a new glassworks that he built in Sazava.

6. Bohemian Glassmakers

 Czech glassmakers didn't put too much faith in historic tendencies at first. So it happened that in France, the style of the second Rococo culminated in France in the 1830s, but not in Bohemia until the 1850s. If Czech glassmakers wanted to hold their own in contests with foreign producers, they had to come to terms with this new style. The glassmaking ovens began to heat with heating generator gas from coal, which allowed them to adopt a 24-hour work cycle. Production oriented progress was more easily accepted in regions without strong traditions. In 1849, the first glassworks arose in Duchov at the foot of the Ore Mountains and five years later in nearby Kostany. In the 1870s, glassworks heated by generator gas created an interactive chain from Uste nad Labem to Duchov. The activities of the Reich, Schreiber and Zahn families were meaningful for the expansion of glass production in Moravia. The Reich family employed up to 3,500 workers and 150 managers, and had glassworks in Austria and Poland as well. The Schreiber family owned several glassworks in Moravia, in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands and from 1890, also in Lednicke Rovne in Slovakia. Josef Riedel Sr. (1816-1894) held the leading position among glass makers in the Jablonec region. In Polubny, he built a glass producing complex complete with their own bronze foundry and glass refinery. His sons gradually joined the company leadership as well. In 1856, the first European glass making school was opened in Kamenicky Senov, and another in 1870 in neighboring Bor. In the Bor and Kamenicky Senov regions, 17 glassworks were opened between the years 1872 and 1913. The local refineries helped rid them of the dependence on supplies of semi-finished products from other regions. In the 1870s, the Viennese businessman Ludwig Lobmeyr (1829-1917) left his mark on the creative orientation of Czech and European glass making. In 1873 he won the main prize at the World Exhibition in Vienna. Ludwig Moser (1833-1916) from Karlovy Vary was first awarded at the same exhibition. In the middle of the 1890s, 60 Czech glass works out of 100 were making hollow glass, perhaps a quarter mirrors, one-tenth pressed and cast glass, around 15 percent illumination glass and semi-finished products for the fledgling electro-technological industry. Historicizing email painting was still used for decorative objects, but on some, the first Art Nouveau elements began to appear.

7. Bohemian Glass at the Turn of the 20^th Century

 Sezession lifestyle and art dominated the second half of the 1890s. Czech glass makers soon adjusted to the new requirements. In 1900, they made up a large representation at the World Trade Fair in Paris, where Loetz's glassworks of Max Spaun (1837-1909) from Klastersky Mlyn received the highest award - the Grand Prize. Art Nouveau meant a period of growth for Ludwig Moser's glassworks in Karlovy Vary and Harrach's glassworks in Novy Svet. The products of both glassworks in Kostiany were quite praiseworthy as well (J. Pallme-Konig & Habel and Josef Rindskopf). For Josef Riedel's glassworks, even more meaningful were non-creative activity, mainly in the production of colored glass used for rods and semi-finished products for Jablonec jewelry production. Max Muhlig has the first Severin semi-automatics installed in 1906 in Kostiany, as well as the Owens performance automatic for bottle production. His son contributed to the implementation of a tip-over method of producing sheet glass according to a project led by Belgian engineer Fourcaulty. Prior to the start of the First World War, Czech artists, being modernly oriented, subscribed to cubism. In 1907, they founded the art society ARTEL. Painters Zdenka Braunerova and Marie Kirschnerova were true pioneers of author glass creation in Bohemia.

8. Bohemian Glass between the World Wars

 After the First World War ended and the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell (1918), 92 % of the glass industry from the whole Empire was lay within the borders of the newly-formed state of Czechoslovakia. Since this enormous production potential was out of proportion with the demand on the local market, Czech glass makers had to export over 90 % of luxurious and 60 % utility glass. In Zelezny Brod, the first Czech glassware business school was founded in 1920. The director was arch. Alois Metelak (1897-1980). One of the school's lecturers was sculptor Jaroslav Brychta (1895-1971), who created the first Zelezny Brod glass figures, glass engraver and sculptor Ladislav Pfenosil, glass painter and graphic designer Zdenekjuna, metal-chaser and mosaicist Oldfich Zak and others. In the 1920s and 30s, functionalism and the style „Art Deco" influenced Czech glass creation and production. Art Deco was favored by producers of glass and refineries in the regions of Bor and Kamenicky Senov. Stefan Rath was employed by management of the studio of the Viennese company Lobmeyr in Kamenicky Senov to create a new creative orientation of etched glass. He found help in sculptor and teacher of the Prague School of Art Design, Jaroslav Horejc (1886-1983). The first attempts at author etched glass are connected with the creative and educational efforts of Josef Drahonovsky (1877-1938) at the Prague School of Art Design, his students and close colleagues. The Moser Glassworks in Karlovy Vary at the time was looking for new opportunities to create etched soda potash glass. Alois Metelak in Zelezny Brod changed the creative view concerning this glass in a very fundamental way. Ludvika Smrckova, an employee with the Ruckel's glasworks in Nizbor discovered new production and mainly creative possibilities of making cut lead crystal, but nobody influenced its production in such a basic manner as Ladislav Prostfednik (1897-1973) from Dobruska with his ever popular sample 500 PK, on display for the first time in 1929. One attention-worthy chapter in recent history of Czech glass making is the cooperation of glass makers and painters with architects. Among the most serious social and artistic tasks was to create window panes and glass mosaics for St. Vitus Cathedral in the Prague Castle and the Liberation Monument in Prague at Vitkova. The Bor company Karl Hosch made chandeliers for the Royal Palace in Addis Ababa, a bank in Lisbon, the Governor's seat in Manila, a cathedral in Sydney and a hotel in Barcelona. The Kamenicky Senov Company Elias Palme made a chandelier for the auditorium of the Royal Opera in Rome (1928), as well as for La Scala in Milan and Theatre de la Bourse in Brussels.

9. Bohemian Glass Manufacture in a Struggle for Survival

 After the signing of the Munich Accords in the autumn of 1938, Czech borders, with the largest producers and exporters of glass and jewelry, were absorbed by Germany. The center of creation of new Czech art glass became Zelezny Brod. Another production center arose in Podebrady, as Czech refineries from Bor and Kamenicky Senov to Sazava, Karolinka, Kvetna, Krasno and Valasske Mezirici all moved there production centers there. In the town Skrdlovice in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands founded a small glassworks in 1941 named after Emanuel Beranek (1899-1973). Characterizing the period best were the etchings of Jindfich Tockstein, Bozetech Medek, Vladimir Linka, Miroslav Platek and others, as well as glass figures by Jaroslav Brychta.

10. Bohemian Glass Makers from 1945 till 1959

 After the Second World War ended in May, 1945, Czech glass makers again returned from inland to northern and western Bohemia. In Novy Bor, the Czech Glass Block was founded and held its first exhibition in August of that same year. In September, classes resumed at glass making schools in Novy Bor and in Kamenicky Senov. Studies were resumed as well at technical schools in Jablonec nad Nisou and at the glass making school in Zelezny Brod. The Prague Arts Industry School began training glass creators (The Arts Industry University since 1946) with special glass art studios of professors Karel Stipl and Josef Kaplicky. The Chemical and Technological University in Prague (the Department of Glass making and Ceramics at Czech Technical University until 1952), the Technical University in Brno and the State Glass making Research Institute in Hradec Kralove all played an important role in postwar reconstruction of the glass making industry. On the basis of a presidential decree coming in 1945, first property of Germans and collaborators was confiscated, and then large companies were nationalized. After the Communist takeover in 1948, the remaining glass refineries were nationalized and incorporated into a number of national enterprises. All private entrepreneurial activity was eliminated by the might of the government in power. On the basis of flawed political decisions, schools in Kamenicky Senov, Novy Bor and Jablonec nad Nisou were closed. The crisis that glass making and jewelry making found themselves in later not of their own doing was partially overcome by the end of the fifties, when the teaching of painters and glass etchers was renewed and training of illumination constructors began at the school in Kamenicky Senov (1957). The creation of the Central Creative Center for the Glass making Industry and Ceramics at the national enterprise Textile Creations in Prague was in essence an attempt to unite the creative activities of glass creators. This center stood at a key decision from the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Consumer Industry concerning the participation of glass makers at the Triennial in Milan in 1957. It also competed at selected expositions for further foreign reviews of Czech glass, including the World Exhibition EXPO '58 in Brussels. The center also took part in the creation of work opportunities for more creators. The Creative Technical Center for Zelezny Brod Glass geared its efforts towards the technology of production of fused glass plastics, which upon artistic evaluation by Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova became one of the most serious contributions of the entire scope of Czechoslovak glass making to world glass culture. Stanislav Libensky (* 1921) previously the director of the Glass making School at Zelezny Brod, became a professor of a special studio for artistic glass creation at the University of Art Design in Prague. He trained dozens of Czech and foreign creators until the end of the 1980s. After collective exhibition of Czech and Italian glass makers in New York (1964), the participation of Stanislav Libensky, Jaroslava Brychtova and Rene Roubicek at the 8^th Bennial in Sao Paolo (1965) were the most important events for Czech author glass creation of that period. In the second half of the 1960s, glass was being used in jewel-making.

11. Bohemian Glass Has Become the Art of Today

 At the end of the 1960s, the first line for float glass, Float, was installed for production in Retenice, and in the Novy Bor Company Crystalex, the first automatic line for drinking glass (L1NKUZ) was introduced. More assembly lines were gradually put in operation in Novy Bor, Svetla nad Sazavou and Libochovice, as well as in Lednicke Rovne and in Poltar in Slovakia. Both experienced and novice creators from Novy Bor, Harrachov, Chribska, Chlum near Trebon, Karlovy Vary, Karolinka, Kvetna and Vrbno pod Pradedem, Zelezny Brod, from the glassworks of Artistic Craftsmanship in Skrdlovice, as well as others influenced the handmade creation of table and drinking glass, as well as decorative glass. The Karlovy Vary company Moser and the factory EXBOR Crystalex in Novy Bor looked for a new expression for cut sodium potassium glass. The Prague Studio of Artistic Craftsmanship also took on this task. In Podebrady and in Svetla nad Sazavou, a new creative and production orientation for cut lead crystal was invented. At Novy Bor, concentrated production of painted glass relied on tried and true techniques and decors, but still looked for further creative opportunities. The 1970s and 1980s were a period of creative flourishing of unique author glass. Its Czech creators knew the answers to perhaps every question connected with its origin. After hand made and cut optical glass, they showed interest in molten plastic, and in the 1980s, members of several generations made paintings on glass and gave it a nontraditional likeness. Jiff Harcuba (* 1928) worked in author engraving, bringing it to one of the historic pinnacles in his portraits of representatives of Czech and European culture. Glass makers cooperated with architects, and used traditional and nontraditional techniques and technology for concrete tasks. New window panes, mosaics, extensive illuminated glass lower ceilings and nontraditional lighting for modern and reconstructed historic interiors originated in the Prague and Brno artistic craftsmanship studios, in the Crystalex Studio in Novy Bor and at the Zelezny Brod Glassworks (Zeleznobrodske sklo). The interest shared by museums, galleries and modern art collectors played a meaningful role in the development of author glass creation in Czechoslovakia and abroad. Glass art exhibitions and work meetings of glass creators and theoretic symposiums took place. For the first time in the autumn of 1983, the state enterprise of Crystalex in Novy Bor organized an international glass symposium. Others followed in three-year intervals.

12. Czech and Bohemian Glass making at the End of the Second Millennium

 The closing chapter is dedicated to both industrial glass production as well as author creation upon the fall of the totalitarian regime in November 1989. This meant the fall of state enterprises and their resulting privatization, after the return to private entrepreneurial activity. This is in connection with the reconstruction of present and building of new enterprises, while making new business contacts with the world. A new philosophy of glass enterprising influenced author creation in the 1990s, and private studios (workshops) began to crop up with modern technical equipment. Special glass studios of professors Vladimir Kopecky (* 1931) and Marian Karel (* 1944) at the University of Art Design in Prague and the High School of Art Design in Kamenicky Senov, Novy Bor and Zelezny Brod contributed to new development of creative glass activities.

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