History of Glassmaking in Bohemia

The very beginning… Czech Republic, also known as Bohemia, has historically been recognized for quality glass and crystal. An important condition for glass making in medieval times was a sufficient amount of wood, water and siliceous sand. All these conditions were well fulfilled in Bohemian border areas.

Initially glass was made by the churches and especially by Benedicts monks, who made glass for windows of churches and monasteries. The earliest evidence of this dates to the ninth century. The first glassmaking factories came into existence in Bohemian forests in the thirteenth century.

The first written evidence of glassmaking in Bohemian area is from the fourteenth century. The first direct records are purchase contracts, and indirect evidence are the names of towns and villages, which mostly exist until today.

Medieval glassblowers were not only excellent craftsmen but also great designers and artists. After some time there was a surplus of products, and Bohemian glassblowers began to export their products to neighboring countries. The oldest written evidence about trade with glass is from 1376. During the early fourteenth century gothic chalices were renowned.

Renaissance

In the 16th century, during the Renaissance period, the most valuable glass was made in Venice, because Venetian glassmakers used the best raw materials from Spain and Orient. Bohemian glassmakers were unable to obtain these high quality raw materials. There were about 34 glassworks in Bohemia at that time, which produced luxurious glass as well as window glass and glass pearls. In response to the Venice competition, Czech glassblowers improved oven construction, used potash instead of soda and developed glass resistible to heating and chemical influences.

Alchemists, of whom there were many in Prague during the reign of Emperor Rudolph II, needed such glass for their experiments. The glassmakers were able to produce chalk glass and later on crystal glass, which was first used at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries by jewelry cutters in place of rare mountain crystal. Rather rare was blue glass colored by cobalt, purple glass with mixture of manganese, glass colored by bone ash and glass of the color of seal wax. Glass painting became very commercially successful, and later on engraving.

Baroque

Late eighteenth and early nineteenth century witnessed another rise of popularity of Czech glass, this time due to painted glass. Colored glass became more widely available in the early nineteenth century, and later at that same period richly decorated glassware brought about another wave of recognition.

Art Nouveau & Art Deco

Art Nouveau, which arose in the late nineteenth century, caused Bohemian glass to be famous again all over the world. Bohemia became, after France and the USA, the third most important country worldwide in Art Nouveau glass production. One of the most significant glassworks of this time period was the Carlsbad Moser. Moser glassware was popular with rulers and aristocracy all over the world. Bohemian costume jewelry, another popular commodity, was the finest in the world markets.

After the First World War, Art Deco style evolved. Art Deco was an expression of spontaneous needs of modern people to beautify their environment. Art Deco also influenced fine sculpture and painting, theatre, dance, music, ballet and literature, and its role and influence on fashion and on luxury hand-made work was very pronounced. Art Deco was inspired both by past style epochs and distant exotic cultures.

Today: Studio Glass

During the second half of the twentieth century a new phenomenon, which transformed the use of glass for artistic expression, appeared – the studio art glass. Czech artists co-created this new art discipline and many of them keep changing its landscape.

The first fine glass sculptures and objects emerged in the 1950s. The first works were inspired by related artistic fields – by sculpture and by painting in particular. A revolutionary technological process was developed – melting glass matter in forms. First sculptures were relatively small in size, but they enabled the artists to master the new technique. Late 1960s and early 1970s brought a shift in perception of glass as a medium of artistic expression. The optical properties of glass and the transformation of the world seen through glass gained prominence.

Czech studio glass art of the last twenty years is tremendously varied and rich. There is hand shaped and blown glass, layered glass, painted glass, glued glass and molten glass, which is currently the technique of choice of many fine glass artists. Molten glass sculptures, sometimes cut and polished, burst with diverse individual expressions of the artists.

The youngest generation of artists knows no artistic boundaries. They use irony and grotesque; they combine glass with metal, stone, synthetic materials and wood to produce works, which could not be produced by traditional technologies and with traditional materials. At present Czech glass studio artists are major contributors to the glass arts around the world.