cooperation with creative artists
The Jablonex Group Company Limited is well aware of the fact that top-quality artistic crystalware cannot come into being without the invention of artists-designers and it is from this awareness that the company’s positive relation to creative art comes, for both utility and free creation.
The company has put together a new range of products in cooperation with contemporary creative artists, products that enrich the range of Desná glass by contemporary designs. One condition that must be met in the company’s cooperation with creative artists is their ability to use the demanding procedures of hand production in order to create unique pieces that will further enrich the company product line in the spirit of the tradition of local glassmaking that has been built over such a long period.
The renewal of the interrupted tradition of close cooperation with designers got underway during the 1990s with the designing of the Krakatit scent bottle and a number of other solitary artefacts designed by Rony Plesl. Plesl is one of the contemporary generation of successful Czech glass designers that cooperates with glass companies in Bohemia and Western Europe. The principal technological possibilities that Jablonex Group has to offer were used in the production of the Krakatit scent bottle, i.e. blowing and pressing by hand, cutting by hand, matting and polishing. The scent bottle was produced in a number of colours that combined clear and black opaque glass with uranium yellow and cobalt blue.
In recent years the company has developed its cooperation with another two young glass designers working under the IRDS label—Ingrid Račková and David Suchopárek, both of whom are graduates of the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague. Together they created a collection of artistic crystalware for Jablonex Group that was inspired by ancient mythology. And so the Desná product line was enhanced in 2002–2007 by vases known as Echo and The Pleiades, decorative sculptures called Electra and Prometheus and candleholders named Perseus and Andromeda, whilst the limited edition Desná Gallery range was enriched by designs featuring images of the ancient gods of Apollo, Hermes, and Dionysus. These are large, blown vases of clear and coloured glass that have been decorated using the technique of deep sandblasting.
The company also renewed its cooperation with long-time in-house designer at the former Jablonec Glassworks Václav Hanuš in 2003. This experienced glass artist has been involved in designing utility glass for more than fifty years and is able to design items for daily use in traditional but at the same time timeless concepts thanks to his perfect knowledge of glassmaking technology. Renewed cooperation with Václav Hanuš has resulted in a vase by the name of Viola, which was launched in the year 2004.
In an attempt to restore the tradition of sculpted products, the company took up cooperation with a young designer from Kladno, Dagmar Šubrtová, a graduate of the sculpting studio of the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague, as well as leading Czech medal-maker Jiří Dostál from Loučná near Jablonec nad Nisou. These two artists worked together to create the figurally adorned vase known as “Alluring”.
Prague designer Ilona Staňková, a student of Professor Vladimír Kopecký at the Academy of Art
Architecture and Design in Prague, prepared a collection of floral décor entitled “Mountain Lilies” for the Jablonex Group. This décor is applied to previously made panel-cut glass using the technique of multi-layer sandblasting.
The latest product of cooperation with contemporary artists and designers from outwith the company is a vase known as “Blowing Bubbles”, which was created in 2007. This vase was designed by Vladimír Komňacký, a leading Czech jewellery maker and art teacher at the Jablonec school of applied arts.
