“The material glass gives us the
opportunity to consciously organize
the substance and its inner space.
The illuminating light reveals, defines
and forms the colourful expression
of the sculpture. The space of colour
and vibration – mysterious, dynamic,
cool or intimate – is a medium for
our message.”

Glass is as old as Earth. The first glass shot out of the Earth’s own fiery furnaces – volcanoes – and deposited itself as shards of obsidian into the hands of the earliest human tool-and-weapon makers.

By 1500 BC, human fingers pressed and flattened a mixture of sand and other materials into molds to make glass vessels. About three thousand years or so passed by before human hands lifted glass up to capture the light, in Medieval cathedral windows.

And then it wasn’t until the middle of the 20^th century that two Czech artists joined hands to make some of the first massive glass sculptures. The artists fell in love with glass (and coincidentally with each other) and rocked the international art world with their startling new designs.

Today, Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová’s tabletop pieces sell for thousands of dollars and are coveted by museums and private collectors around the world.

Yet, hundreds of people in Prague walk right past some of the artists’ massive glass sculptures every day, looking right through but never really seeing them. Other pieces vanished when renovators replaced decorative windows and partitions with flat glass and solid walls. Stanislav Libenský died in 2002; his wife Jaroslava Brychtová is now in her 80s.

The masters, like their masterpieces, are some of the Czech Republic’s quickly vanishing national treasures.

Although their original sculpture molds still exist, even the glass craftsmen who are skilled enough to část their designs in glass are also all nearly gone.

Love under glass

Stanislav Libenský, born in 1921, was an artist and painter. Jaroslava Brychtová, born three years later, was a glass artist, making small cast figures. She had learned the craft from her father, Jaroslav Brychta, a master in his own right. But her father produced mostly the utilitarian glass that the post-World War II economy (not to mention the Socialist government) required. Regarded as an anonymous factory worker, Mr Brychta was never really valued as a creative designer. Most of his creative work, too, has vanished – lost, broken, perhaps stashed away in a dusty attic somewhere, according to Prague’s Galerie Pokorná owner, Jitka Pokorná.

But the factory worker’s daughter had the fire, the curiosity, and the eye. From 1945 to 1950 Jaroslava Brychtová studied at the Academy of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts, both in Prague. In the early 1950s she worked as a designer for the nationalized glassworks, tucked away in the north Bohemian glassmaking region at Železný Brod; she founded the Centre for Melting Glass for Architecture there.

Meanwhile, Professor Libenský was just enough older than Miss Brychtová to have earlier run up against the officialdom of the Nazi Protectorate. In the late 1930s the Nazis closed all the universities and gave painters like Libenský an ultimatum: move to North Bohemia and teach glass design, or stop all creative work, including painting, forever. Libenský went to North Bohemia in 1937 to quickly learn the basics of glassmaking, returning to Prague in 1939 to continue his glass studies at the School of Applied Arts. In 1945 he again returned to North Bohemia, now as a lecturer and designer at the Specialized School for Glassmaking in Nový Bor. He was mostly making small decorative vases and bowls.

It’s ironic, glass gallery owner Pokorná points out, that the Communist Party’s planned economy helped rebuild the Czech glass industry and incidentally provided the two artists access to the space and materials to start their revolution in glass. Other creative types – mainly painters and writers – were required to produce in the happyworker, Socialist Realism style; but glass makers slipped

out of range of the State’s watchful eye. To officials, glass was simply a factory product.

Then, in 1954, it happened. The designer at Železný Brod saw a sketch for a glass bowl by the designer at Nový Bor. “I love your sketch of the woman’s face,” Jaroslava Brychtová told Stanislav Libenský, “and I’d like to try casting it in glass.” And the life-long love affair began.

Revolution in glass

And so the material that had been prized throughout human history by anonymous tool-chippers, bowlmakers, and stained glass artisans underwent another transformation. Only this time we know the names. These two Czech glass artists created impossibly larger and larger pieces, pushing their creativity and materials to the edge, ultimately producing the next revolution in the medium by creating some of the first true glass sculpture.

But it’s not just the size of their pieces that assures Libenský and Brychtová’s work a place in history. They were also among the first to manipulate the interior planes, lines, light, and texture which can only be seen inside the depths of a transparent medium like glass (see sidebar: Kids: Try this at home). Further, they rejected the usual method of coloring glass (using finely-powdered minerals for a consistent tone throughout the entire piece) and instead boldly designed space for chunks of colored glass to go into their molds along with the clear glass.

Libenský and Brychtová caused further ripples in their glass revolution when they began using brighter colors than the previous standard gray, brown, or bottle green. Suppliers were shocked at the massive quantities of ruby reds, golden yellows, and fuchsia-to-purple colors the artists ordered. Such bright colors had always been requested by the handful, just enough for adding sparkle to jewelry, buttons, and beads. Now, here were two crazy artists demanding quantities sufficient for windows, murals, and room dividers.

“Haven’t you made a mistake?” critics challenged Libenský, when they held one of his early pieces up to the light and saw the air bubbles frozen inside. Today, using air bubbles (even arranging them symmetrically) as part of the design inside is a standard trademark of many glass artists.

A lasting legacy or vanishing art?

It’s as a teacher at Prague’s Academy of Applied Arts (1963-1987) that Stanislav Libenský is gratefully and fondly remembered. He had the knack for motivating young students to achieve perfection while finding their own creativity and originality, says gallery-owner Pokorná.

“He wasn’t the traditional kind of teacher who insisted on having followers,” she explains. “He felt honored to be a part of the group of future glass artists.” Ivana Šrámková agrees: “Studying [in the Studio of Glass, 1981-87] with Professor Libenský was very important for me,” the Czech glass artist says. “His way of speaking and his gestures were so distinctive that I will never forget them. He was interested in our work and our lives and he liked discussing with us. He had our total respect and all other students from other studios envied us our professor.”

James Walker is an American/New Zealander glass artist who also exudes enthusiasm typical of students describing a beloved master teacher; he studied under Libenský and Brychtová at the prestigious Pilchuck School, Seattle, in 1990. Walker says that working in glass was only part of his motivation for going to Pilchuck; in comparison, the opportunity to “absorb input from such artistic giants” made the glass “a mere distraction.” He witnessed how the couple worked together as a team “with one’s strengths balancing the other’s weaknesses. Rare is the possibility to observe such a harmonious marriage of talent,” he asserts. “The partnership’s legacy assures the world a very long wait for another performance of such quality.”

Libenský and Brychtová’s work is treasured abroad, and their unique way of seeing, lives on in their students who are producing their own designs in the Czech Republic today. Unfortunately, though, today’s glass artists have been cut free from State support to flounder in a cut-throat and roller-coaster consumer economy.

The question is, How much longer can native glass sculpture treasures, new and old, wait for their rightful acknowledgement and eminence in the Czech Republic?

The Search for Vanishing Treasure in Prague

A quick hunt for some of Libenský and Brychtová’s glass treasures in Prague yields surprising results:

• St Wenceslas Chapel at St Vitus Cathedral.
  Because the Crown Jewels are kept here, public access to Libenský and Brychtová’s stained glass windows is barred by a gate.
• In the lobby, InterContinental Hotel. A longstanding venue for Libenský and Brychtová’s work, a sculpture has now been removed. “It was some big bird or something,” a concierge said.
• Prague Town Hall. Jackpot. Enter the Tourism Information section, go straight back and turn right and be awed by the massive clear glass window. Imagine more than 1,000 tall glasses of sparkling water stacked on top of each other. Now imagine just the water without the glasses, and with a cornerto-corner, hollowed-out, negative-space embossed flower… or dancer… or… you decide.
• Foyer, Metro yellow line “B”, Národní Třída.
  Get out your handkerchiefs. The chipped, gritty remains of the window are at the top of the escalator, straight ahead, partially obscured by a fold-out kiosk selling tennis shoes for 150 kc.
• Congress Centre, the front windows of small Meeting Hall 1, first floor. An unconfirmed find, because all the names of the meeting rooms have been changed from descriptions released at the time of installation; and the public masterpieces are not identified by any signs or plaques.