Our Way to Glass Works

The closure and decline of most of the East Bavarian glassworks from 2006 on the one hand, the departure of young, well-trained glass students on the other: We did not want to accept these developments impotently. After all, the history of glass – as staged in the Frauenau Glass Museum – illustrates how innovatively glassmakers in Europe have always reacted to the ups and downs of the economy and culture!

As early as 2004 Bild-Werk Frauenau initiated several actions that brought together glass people, educators, museum people and art historians in Frauenau, at the glass furnace, in the workshops and in the glass museum: from 2005 onwards, we cooperated in the artist-in-residence program in the Eisch Glassworks, in 2006 the International Glass Symposium „Glass in Context: Art-Image-Industry“  took place, and 2016 saw the symposium „In-Between Hot Glass. Perspectives of Graal Glass.“

From 2014 onwards, as a team, we developed the first “Glass Works” concept for our Eastern-Bavarian glass region. From 2017 we expanded the focus to the exchange relationships between glass workers in Europe. Together with university partners from Bornholm/Copenhagen, Graz, and from Ústí nad Labem in North Bohemia, we developed the project „Glass Works. Training | Networking | Taking Roots“. In 2018, the project was accepted into the EU funding program CREATIVE EUROPE CULTURE with the excellent result of 91 out of 100 points, with a funding chance of 21 percent. In addition to other sponsors, the Bavarian Ministry of Finances and Home Affairs supports the project substantially.