Collaboration between glass-blowers and designers often leads to unusual discoveries

In an era defined by digital technology, the ancient craft of glass-blowing may seem a little old fashioned, but for Lasvit founder and president Leon Jakimic, the tradition has never been more important.

In the past decade the Czech glass manufacturer has forged a reputation for innovative lighting and show-stopping architectural and art installations created through a series of high-profile collaborations between skilled craftsmen at one of the oldest traditional glass-blowing workshops in Bohemia, and a host of international designers and architects, as well as its own in-house team.

While more time consuming and considerably more expensive than the usual design-making process, the collaborative process creates an experimental environment that often leads to unusual discoveries. The “Inhale” lamp by Oki Sato of Japanese design studio Nendo is an example. After observing master glass-blowers at work, Sato hit upon the idea of reversing the usual process of blowing air into molten material. The negative air pressure from inhaling created a sensuous new inverted shape.

Designers also need to feel they have complete freedom to design whatever they like, says Hong Kong-based Jakimič. “We give them only a few design guidelines that we define as “3C: concept, context, craftsmanship” and ask them to use natural, authentic materials such as stone, wood, and metal, with glass or crystal used as the primary material.”

It is, of course, easy to talk of creativity and innovation but much harder to put into practice. For Czech artisans whose techniques have remained unchanged for hundreds of years, it called for a new way of thinking, says Lasvit creative director Maxim Velcovsky, whose own ultra-contemporary “Frozen” lamp collection was the result of experimenting with pouring molten glass over a dome shaped metal mould until it created the perfect fluid shape that captured the moment water is transformed into ice. The same approach also enabled British-born, Hong Kong-based designer Michael Young to create the unique base for his “Homune” table with 36 hand-blown individual elements fashioned together into a single statement piece.

More recently, it was the unique opportunity to push the boundaries of the texture and tactility of glass that attracted Hong Kong architect Andre Fu to create a modernist-inspired collection of lighting for his newly launched Andre Fu Living range.

Fu’s TAC/TILE family of table and floor lamps and suspended pendants that debuted at this year’s Milan Furniture Fair centres on an elegantly simple opaque folded glass “tile” inspired by the 1932 Maison de Verre, Czech metropolitan passageways, and traditional Chinese tiled roofs as well as the designer’s favourite architectural material: modernist glass bricks.