Hand-Made Experiments

Ten years ago, you launched your first light­ing col­lec­tion with Lasvit – Nev­erend­ing Glo­ry. Do you remem­ber what went into design­ing it?

I clear­ly remem­ber the moment when Lasvit’s Art Direc­tor Max­im Velčovský approached us to col­lab­o­rate. It was bare­ly a year after me and Hen­ry Wiel­gus start­ed the stu­dio, I was liv­ing in Lon­don at the time, and was just on a vis­it to Prague to take part in the Design­blok fes­ti­val. I had just installed our booth and was a mere stone’s throw away from Lasvit’s presentation. 

I remem­ber meet­ing him in the hall­way and show­ing him our fresh­ly set up instal­la­tion. He liked our work so much he imme­di­ate­ly offered to col­lab­o­rate. The only small prob­lem was that we had less than ten days to turn in our first design. (laughs)

Well, they do say a genius design some­times takes less than a minute to crys­tal­lize. But how did you man­age to design a best­seller in just under ten days?

Hon­est­ly, it was ridicu­lous. We worked day and night on it, and final­ly came up with five con­cepts. Max­im vis­it­ed us at our stu­dio, and we left Nev­erend­ing Glo­ry for last, because we were sure it had real poten­tial. And we were right, as he was imme­di­ate­ly inter­est­ed in it.

At that time, you already achieved suc­cess with the design you made as part of your grad­u­ate the­sis – you were ren­der­ing icon­ic Mod­ernist fur­ni­ture in wire con­tours, and even devel­oped the project for Cap­pelli­ni… And we find this same ten­den­cy in Nev­erend­ing Glo­ry as well.

In Nev­erend­ing Glo­ry, we orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to update the clas­si­cal form of a can­dle-chan­de­lier. We liked the idea of retain­ing only its out­line, of mak­ing it sym­bol­ic. I think it was me who came up with the idea, and Hen­ry then pro­posed we use the shapes of par­tic­u­lar chan­de­liers which hang in the world’s most famous theaters. 

We were fas­ci­nat­ed by that sin­gu­lar moment of awe – when­ev­er you walk into the La Scala in Milan, the Palais Gar­nier in Paris or New York City’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera, it is always the exquis­ite chan­de­lier which first takes one’s breath away. So, we start­ed play­ing around with their icon­ic shapes and rotat­ing them on their axis. And it was Max­im who brought our atten­tion to the Estates The­ater in Prague. We found out it was the only the­ater which nev­er had to be rebuilt due to being dam­aged in a fire. It even host­ed Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart who, in 1787, pre­miered his famous opera Don Gio­van­ni there.

Since then, the Nev­erend­ing Glo­ry col­lec­tion has become a great hit. It hangs in projects all over the world, for exam­ple also in the homes of singer Justin Bieber and actress Salma Hayek. What does it take for a design to become successful?

At first sight, it has to scream: “this is it”. The mag­ic of Nev­erend­ing Glo­ry con­sists in that it is sim­ply dif­fer­ent from all oth­er designs.

GLASS IS A TRUE MYSTERY

What did you find sur­pris­ing about work­ing with glass? Nev­erend­ing Glo­ry was, after all, the first project where you used the material…

In the case of this col­lec­tion, we start­ed out think­ing the instal­la­tions would end up being much big­ger… But once in the glass­works, we found out that our ideas were sim­ply not com­men­su­rate with real­i­ty. The glass­mak­ing tech­nique did not allow us to make the large shapes we had orig­i­nal­ly envi­sioned. It was our first time work­ing with glass, and our inex­pe­ri­ence in fact helped us design it, as some­times know­ing too much can lim­it the imag­i­na­tion even before you sketch it out on paper. 

Being green is great! After we launched the Nev­erend­ing Glo­ry col­lec­tion, our design­er col­leagues, who have often worked with glass much longer, came to us and said that only some­one who has nev­er before worked with glass could have come up with such a design. There is def­i­nite­ly some­thing to that! (laughs)

This is also true for your new col­lec­tion Hid­den Light, which you had been devel­op­ing over a num­ber of years. What turned out to be most chal­leng­ing about it?

We made the pro­to­type very quick­ly and both me and Hen­ry real­ly liked the way it looked. The biggest chal­lenge for us was devel­op­ing the ini­tial con­cept into a read­i­ly repeat­able prod­uct. I’m very grate­ful to the devel­op­ers and glass­work­ers who stayed with us every step of the way and didn’t give up despite the many obsta­cles and challenges. 

I think Hid­den Light and Nev­erend­ing Glo­ry are very much relat­ed, in an uncon­scious sort of way. We were orig­i­nal­ly approached by Lasvit’s Art Direc­tor for my grad­u­ate work with wired fur­ni­ture, and he asked us whether we might not wish to blow some­thing into it too. And although Nev­erend­ing Glo­ry ulti­mate­ly went a dif­fer­ent way, we sort of came full cir­cle with Hid­den Light.

“Get­ting a good idea is a ques­tion of the right moment.”

How long have you been work­ing on Hid­den Light?

I dis­tinct­ly remem­ber dri­ving back from Nový Bor with Hen­ry – we were think­ing about the new design we had just pre­sent­ed at Lasvit, but the reac­tion was rather luke­warm. They were these sheet-met­al struc­tures which poured glass. So, we were leav­ing a lit­tle disappointed.

But we start­ed brain­storm­ing in the car: What if the tube wasn’t sheet-met­al, but wire, and the glass poured out­wards in all direc­tions? In those two hours of dri­ving from Nový Bor to Prague, we devel­oped the new idea, and at home we sketched it out. We couldn’t wait to see how it would real­ly look, so we didn’t waste any time and bought a met­al net out of which we made the first con­struc­tion. Then we went to the glass­works and let the glass­work­ers blow glass into it. We knew right away that this was the way to go.

“It was obvi­ous Hid­den Light and Nev­erend­ing Glo­ry had tremen­dous poten­tial from the very first, because they were total­ly dif­fer­ent from any­thing else.”

What was the Art Director’s reaction?

We were just mov­ing between stu­dios at the time, so we were meet­ing at Henry’s cot­tage. We arranged a meet­ing with Max­im and [Lasvit pro­duc­er] Mark Effmert in this pic­turesque rur­al land­scape, and the lights shone so won­der­ful­ly it was like a fairy tale. It took us a long time to iron out the entire process of blow­ing the glass into a met­al mount with­out hav­ing the mate­ri­als stick togeth­er. It proved to be a big challenge. 

We final­ly devel­oped a spe­cial met­al mould which would make the glass­work­ers’ job eas­i­er, so they would no longer had to fret whether the met­al form would decou­ple from the glass at the very end. The form we start­ed using was actu­al­ly a 3D scan of the orig­i­nal, hand­made one, and even includes all its lit­tle incon­sis­ten­cies. In this way, Hid­den Light is also a com­men­tary on the post-indus­tri­al zeitgeist.

The human touch of a crafts­man is impor­tant to your projects, isn’t it?

I enjoy the ten­sion between indus­tri­al and man­u­al labor, so even though my projects might be pro­duced in large series, I always like to leave them with a touch of craft – whether it is in their struc­ture, mate­r­i­al or by includ­ing small mis­takes… It makes the object much more inter­est­ing and adds a human dimension.

What is the most impor­tant prin­ci­ple of Hid­den Light?

It was real­ly impor­tant for us to keep the light source opaque and the light­bulb invis­i­ble. This lat­er also gen­er­at­ed the name. It makes the entire object tru­ly mag­i­cal, while remain­ing func­tion­al and giv­ing light. It’s always a great chal­lenge to com­bine these two dimen­sions just right.

“Lasvit opened my eyes to the ways of glass.”

ON MY OWN

You usu­al­ly show your clients only the fin­ished prod­uct, and nev­er the pre­lim­i­nary sketch­es. Why is that?

I don’t like to wait. I pre­fer to com­plete the idea myself and only then start mak­ing com­pro­mis­es. It usu­al­ly takes a lot of ener­gy and mon­ey, and some­times doesn’t pay off, but it makes the most sense to me. (laughs)

While Hid­den Light was being devel­oped, the world was going through a pan­dem­ic and both you and Hen­ry had new­borns. You decid­ed to take a sab­bat­i­cal from work, and now both of you work on your own. What did work­ing in a team give you?

Work­ing with Hen­ry, I real­ized just how impor­tant it is for any design to have a sto­ry. The pro­pos­al basi­cal­ly starts out with it, and grad­u­al­ly finds its way to its final form. In the ini­tial phas­es of the design, nei­ther the shape nor mate­ri­als are at all impor­tant to me.

While Hen­ry rad­i­cal­ly changed pro­fes­sion, you stayed in the design field, ren­o­vat­ed your own stu­dio and today work under your own brand.

2018 was a break­ing point for me. My sec­ond child was born, and after the last hur­ried years – going from one col­lab­o­ra­tive project to anoth­er, con­stant­ly mov­ing between Milan, Lon­don and Prague – I decid­ed it was time for some fam­i­ly time. I final­ly end­ed up tak­ing a two-year break and was work­ing on set­ting up my own space in an old med­i­cine fac­to­ry in my favorite neigh­bor­hood of Vršovice. Noth­ing much has changed apart from that, and nowa­days I go head­long into projects with as much fer­vor as ever before. (laughs)

Jan Plecháč’s career as a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary design­er start­ed in 2011 at the pre­sen­ta­tion of young tal­ent at the Salone Satel­lite in Milan. His project was so good that it gained the atten­tion of inter­na­tion­al gal­lerists, insti­tu­tions and fur­ni­ture mak­ers, and imme­di­ate­ly cat­a­pult­ed him among the elite of prod­uct design. Since then, he has been design­ing for world-renown brands such as Cap­pelli­ni, Menu, La Chance or Lasvit, mak­ing col­lec­tor items which strad­dle the fields of art and design for gal­leries like Mint Shop and Rossana Orlan­di, as well as pure­ly bespoke prod­ucts for many pri­vate clients. His eclec­tic port­fo­lio shows Plecháč’s exper­i­men­tal approach – whether it is prod­uct or inte­ri­or design, it is always the over­all con­cept which is most impor­tant for him, and aes­thet­ics only come sec­ond. His work often shows the signs of crafts­man­ship. He has been part of the Lasvit fam­i­ly since 2012.