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Breaking the mold

Studio Pelechov redefines the possibilities of cast glass
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By Mimi Fronczak Rogers
For The Prague Post
September 3rd, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Even small pieces require days of hot, strenuous labor in the studio.
Zdeněk Lhotský and Studio Pelechov


at Czech Museum of Fine Arts Ends Sept. 14. Husova 19-21, Prague 1-Old Town. Open Tues.-Sun. 10 a.m.-6 p.m.
The village of Pelechov is a just a small dot on the map of the Czech Republic. But on a map of the international art-glass world, that dot marks an important place. That’s because this north Bohemian hamlet is home to Studio Pelechov, one of the most respected facilities in Europe, if not the world, for producing large-scale sculptures and architectural glass by melting the material in specially made molds.
Mold-melting has its earliest origins in the cultures of ancient Egypt, Phoenicia and Persia. It involves melting small shards of glass in a mold, and slowly cooling the resulting object. The technique faded into oblivion for many centuries until it was resurrected and greatly improved upon in postwar Czechoslovakia.
An exhibition at the Czech Museum of Fine Arts celebrates the craftsmanship and tradition of this unique glass studio with a large display of sculptures and decorative objects by artists who have worked with the Studio Pelechov collective over the past 14 years to bring their creative visions to life.
The Pelechov studio of today is the descendent of a glass studio established in 1950 by world-renowned glass artist Jaroslava Brychtová (born in 1924). Her father, Jaroslav Brychta, was one of the modern pioneers of the technique, and, together with her husband, Stanislav Libenský (1921–2002), she took the technique to new heights. Brychtová’s workshop was an arm of the state-owned Železnobrodské sklo (Železný Brod Glassworks), located a short distance down the hill.
By the mid-’80s, Brychtová and Libenský had stopped working at the Pelechov studio. In 1994, Zdeněk Lhotský and fellow artist Oldřich Plíva took over the deteriorating space, which had been slated for liquidation, and thus became the third generation of artists to pick up the torch of mold-cast glass in the Železný Brod region. Lhotský became the studio’s sole owner in 1996.
Lhotský’s relationship with glass goes back three decades. Born in 1956 in Prague, he attended the High School of Applied Arts for Glassmaking in Železný Brod in the 1970s and then went on to study at Prague’s Academy of Art, Architecture and Design (UMPRUM) under Libenský. Lhotský was a member of the legendary art group Tvrdohlaví (the Stubborn Ones), which formed in the late 1980s and energized the pre-revolutionary unofficial art scene (the group disbanded in 1992). Lhotský wasn’t the only sculptor in the group, but he was the only one with a glassmaking background. With his encouragement, several of his former Tvrdohlaví cohorts, including Michal Gabriel, Stefan Milkov, Jaroslav Róna and Čestmír Suška, have produced cast-glass sculptures in Pelechov.
An important juncture in the revival of Studio Pelechov came in 1995, when Libenský and Brychtová asked Lhotský to help them realize a cast-glass window for a classical music hall in Tokyo. The couple then asked the studio to carry out further cast-glass sculptures and architectural commissions, including a set of hauntingly beautiful chapel windows for Špilberk Castle in Brno. The studio’s rising reputation started attracting artists from abroad, including Howard Ben Tré from the United States and Peter Bremers from the Netherlands, to name just two.
For glass artists, the high standard of facilities offered by Pelechov and the willingness of Lhotský and his team to push the mold-casting technology to meet new challenges makes the trip to north Bohemia worthwhile. As a film running in fast motion at the exhibition shows, a typical day in the studio is strenuous, sweaty, loud and messy. A single sculpture can take a month or more to complete (not including its design and producing the mold for it), from the melting of glass shards in the mold and the slow annealing process to its cutting, polishing or other surface treatment. Mistakes are costly.
Many of the pieces in the show fall into the category of applied art or design. In addition to producing designs for the well-known Czech design team Olgoj Chorchoj, for example, one of the studio’s primary activities is producing Lhotský’s own line of cast-glass bowls and fused and “slumped” pieces. Slumping involves heating slabs of glass until high temperature and gravity combine to cause the material to conform to a mold. Among Lhotský’s signature designs are hexagonal vessels (bowls, vases) in various sizes and colors, and elegantly simple plates. The latter come with geometric or mazelike designs, or delicate effects that resemble fish scales, craquelure on an Old Master painting, or something you might see wiggling under a microscope. Other pieces are enlivened by bubbles trapped inside the glass — a desired “flaw” that results in numerous optical spheres — or delicate ribbons that look like captured smoke.
A separate room upstairs at the exhibition has an installation of Lhotský’s wallpaperlike op art and geometric designs, along with matrices of symbols that appear on a sculpture installed in the cellar, Stele (1,600 Emblems), in which the cryptic symbols are sandblasted onto a tall rectangle of cast glass.
This exhibition should be of interest for all admirers of art glass. It pays tribute to a studio whose legacy reaches back to the middle of the 20th century and has played a central role in the development of the mold-casting technique — perhaps the single most important Czech contribution to contemporary art glass.

Mimi Fronczak Rogers can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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