Glassworks

Glass Works Goes South-East: The Stoelze Glass-Center Bärnbach

The old glassworks in Bärnbach in Styria is a household name in the glass world thanks to the Styrian state exhibition “Glass & Coal” in 1988. Today, Slovenian glassmakers work there on high-end glass goblets, and Bärnbach masters produce colorful handicraft souvenirs. Stoelzle will continue to expand manual production with solar energy creating the melt. Next door, in the striking Kada glass museum building, the lovingly tended glass museum maintains lively exchanges with Croatia. School classes and groups are introduced to the glass with great commitment. The Glass Works exhibition with its didactic tour through the cross-border history of glass making (with digitally prepared exhibition materials) fits right in here: This is how the diverse guests at the vernissage on May 19 experienced it.

The exhibition can be seen here, in the Stoelzle Glass Center with its active operator KommR Ing. Martin Hittaller, until August 19, 2022. From there it moves onto its last location in the Frauenau Glass Museum.

Glass Works Goes Industry: The Styrian Chamber of Commerce

In the spring of 2022, our glass-historical exhibition returned to where it was created in 2018 – 2020: to Styria in Austria, which is portrayed as one of five glass landscapes in the exhibition. Styria and glass? In fact, in this old mining and industrial region we encounter a very distinct glass tradition. In the present, this is expressed in the tension between the Stoelzle Group as a global player, which has a highly automated glass production site in Köflach in Styria, and active arts and crafts studios.

First of all, the exhibition was a guest from March 1st to April 28th in the representative foyer of the Styrian Chamber of Commerce in Graz. “A pleasant art exhibition, a bit of distraction in the pulsating heart of the economy, which is faced with completely different, global challenges?”

This was an expectation at the opening, on invitation of the President of the Chamber of Commerce, Dr. Karl-Heinz Dernoscheg on April 4th, and greeted by Georg Feith, GEO of the Stoelzle Group, on behalf of the Styrian glass industry. However, during the guided tour of the exhibition with Katharina Eisch-Angus, there was a lively discussion about how productive glass is as a material in the dialogue between art and business. The spirit of the age and the economy are reflected in glass. With art, design, craftsmanship and manufacturing interacting, glass becomes an innovative economic factor.

Cross-border Cultural Heritage Glass – What Next?

That was the name of a well-attended event at the Munich Chamber of Crafts on January 10, 2022, despite Covid restrictions. The occasion was our touring exhibition “Glass Works. European Glass Lives in Craft, Art and Industry”, which stopped there over the Christmas and New Year period. In the Joseph-Wild-Hall, in the middle of Munich’s old art district Schwabing, and illustrated with pictures and stories from the Glass Museum in Frauenau, cultural anthropologist Katharina Eisch-Angus traced how European glass people always crossed borders, always breaking new ground – and how the international studio glass movement did just that from the hotspot Frauenau.

Afterwards there was an exciting panel discussion with Prof. Dr. Daniel Drascek and Wolfgang Loesche from the Bavarian Commission of Experts for UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, together with Heinz Fischer and Sarah Höchstetter from Glass Works/Bild-Werk, and Selina Weber and Patricia Mund as Glass Works Trainees from the winter of 2019/2020 intake. The latter both described how they had used the Glass Works training as a stepping stone into self-employment.

Perhaps the most important message was that the era of the large glassworks in the Bavarian Forest is largely over. However, in small units, and with new structures, , glass still has a chance. And it is exactly here that Bild-Werk, with its experience and connections, is exactly right in time: here we can create a “turning point” that is currently not only emerging in East Bavaria, and that opens up new perspectives for regional development.

Excursion to Coburg: Exhibition and Workshop

The exhibition European Glass Lives in Craft, Art and Industry opened as planned on April 30 in the rooms of Veste Coburg. The presentation fit very well into a series of exhibitions in the so-called “LABORATORY”, in which young glass-makers were given a platform to build a bridge to today’s glass world in the rather historical context of the collection.

At the invitation of the museum director, Dr. Sven Hauschke, trainees from the first two training phases and the Glass-Works team met on site. Dr. Hauschke welcomed the visitors and guided them through the collection of the Veste. Lisa Eidenhammer, who developed the concept of the exhibition, was the contact person for the trainees in the special exhibition.

Particularly interesting during these discussions was the art historian’s view of the project content and the results of the trainees in the context of the historical environment. Dr Hauschke is also a member of the board of trustees of Bild-Werk Frauenau.

Afterwards, Dr. Hauschke guided the group through the collection and a special exhibition in the “European Museum for Modern Glass” in Rödenthal, and explained the museum’s educational concepts and collection activities. The explanations and dialogues about art with the material glass were an inspiring conclusion to the excursion to Coburg for the participants, especially for the trainees.

The Third Training Phase

Each training phase has its own dynamic in its structure, and can develop and build on the experiences of the previous training phases. Each trainees’ group has its own character, which is formed from the dialogue between the selected trainees, with their individual profiles and projects on the one hand, and the changing tutors on the other. Learning from each other at eye level, in the interaction of craftsmanship, art and design is a key point of the training phases.
It was very pleasing that at the start of our third training phase, the number of applications had more than doubled compared to the previous time. When selecting the trainees this time more attention was paid to the technical basics. As a result, there were four trained glassblowers from three countries in the group!
Another novelty was the tutoring. Kit Paulson, a glass artist from the USA, supervised the project on site in Frauenau. Whilst B. Jane Cowie, glass artist and project manager from Singapore, was regularly connected to the group via the web, and was also available to the trainees individually as required. Both tutors were no strangers to Bild-Werk due to their work as summer academy teachers in previous years. In addition to the broad quality of their artistic content, they were also very valuable for the trainees because of their professional market presence in the digital age.
The training was again accompanied by online lectures and discussions with successful players in the international glass scene. The trainees particularly benefited from the wider intercontinental contacts of the two tutors.
As a result, the trainees not only brought new “business skills” back to Frauenau, but also exciting insights into a region that offers studios and companies, especially of artisans, a structural base.