The Elusive

The life of Bořek Šípek was the sto­ry of an artist who, being hard­work­ing and coura­geous, rose from hum­ble begin­nings to inter­na­tion­al fame. In par­tic­u­lar, he did not lack the courage to cross bor­ders – both the geo­graph­i­cal ones, when he emi­grat­ed from Czecho­slo­va­kia to West Ger­many at the age of 19, and 15 years lat­er moved to the Nether­lands; and the ones that could lim­it his work.

Rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly on, his tal­ent and enthu­si­asm brought him his first pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess­es. One of his ear­ly awards in archi­tec­ture was the Ger­man Archi­tec­ture Prize in 1983. Šípek received it for a house called Glashaus that he designed for his sis­ter Stanisla­va. A num­ber of oth­er archi­tec­tur­al assign­ments fol­lowed short­ly. Instead of the anonymi­ty of mod­ern archi­tec­tur­al trends, Šípek always opt­ed for an indi­vid­ual approach. 

This was the way he worked on both large build­ings and inte­ri­or designs which he car­ried out all over the world. Whether design­ing the Komat­su Gin­za depart­ment store in Tokyo, the Ško­da Auto pavil­ion in Wolfs­burg, or the inte­ri­ors of the Schoe­baloo chain of shops and Karl Lager­feld bou­tiques, Šípek was always suc­cess­ful in find­ing the right bal­ance between lux­u­ry and func­tion­al­i­ty, between the inti­mate and the public.

“I want peo­ple to fall in love also with the objects that sur­round them, to real­ly feel their pres­ence as a phys­i­cal chal­lenge. I’m only inter­est­ed in mak­ing objects with which we expe­ri­ence spe­cial moments, even on an ordi­nary day.”

He also had a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to put his expe­ri­ence with “great” archi­tec­ture and inte­ri­or design to good use in a place with count­less his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences, sym­bols of pow­er and grandeur – Prague Cas­tle. In 1990, Václav Hav­el, the Czech Pres­i­dent at that time, appoint­ed him the chief archi­tect of his offi­cial res­i­dence. It is clear­ly evi­dent now how good a deci­sion this was. Ful­ly aware of rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tions between inter­de­pen­dent objects, Bořek Šípek man­aged to add both larg­er and small­er archi­tec­tur­al ele­ments and fur­nish­ings such as chairs, car­pets and light­ing fix­tures to the exist­ing archi­tec­ture, which is itself a mix­ture of dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal styles, with­out dis­turb­ing the spir­it of the place. 

His designs accu­rate­ly cap­ture what is espe­cial­ly impor­tant in places like this – a sense of mag­nif­i­cence which, how­ev­er, is not exclu­sive. Etched in the mem­o­ry of Czech cit­i­zens is, above all, the office of Václav Hav­el from which he deliv­ered his pres­i­den­tial speech­es; but Šípek also designed the entrance to the Office of the Pres­i­dent, the inte­ri­or of the Prague Cas­tle Pic­ture Gallery and many oth­er elements.

Function is the beginning, not the objective

“If you don’t know how to start anew, you end up being in a rut. I don’t like to be restrict­ed. By any­one and by any­thing. I like to try new things, new mate­ri­als, new prin­ci­ples, new meth­ods.” The approach to cre­ation that Bořek Šípek applied in all areas of his activ­i­ty is par­tic­u­lar­ly evi­dent in his prod­uct design. His unique abil­i­ty to han­dle dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als and employ func­tions of objects has attract­ed the atten­tion of many renowned com­pa­nies, with which he sub­se­quent­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed. The first to approach him, in the mid-1980s, was the Ital­ian com­pa­ny Dri­ade, for which Šípek was design­ing var­i­ous objects until his untime­ly death in 2016. 

Dri­ade pro­vid­ed him with media sup­port and cre­at­ed a cat­a­logue for him, fea­tur­ing exclu­sive col­lec­tions pro­duced in lim­it­ed quan­ti­ties. After­wards, he was approached by oth­er well-known man­u­fac­tur­ers, for exam­ple Alessi, Rosen­thal and Vit­ra. In spite of their extra­or­di­nary and play­ful shapes, his pieces of fur­ni­ture as well as glass, porce­lain and met­al table­ware and oth­er objects are high­ly func­tion­al and prac­ti­cal. In the 1980s, Šípek’s skills earned him an indis­putable place among lead­ing design­ers, such as Philippe Star­ck, Ettore Sottsass, Ron Arad and Oscar Tus­quets, who were also his friends.

Šípek’s objects often have a sym­bol­ic mean­ing and their shapes and names refer to past per­son­al expe­ri­ences. For instance, the shape of the Bam­bi chair, named after Šípek’s first wife, the dancer Bam­bi Uden, alludes to the seat­ed posi­tion of a dancer with legs apart. It is also a sug­ges­tion of the erot­ic aspect of Šípek’s works, and it is clear he did not per­ceive eroti­cism only in its most obvi­ous sense, but rather as a rela­tion­ship between man and object. 

“I want peo­ple to fall in love also with the objects that sur­round them, to real­ly feel their pres­ence as a phys­i­cal chal­lenge. I’m only inter­est­ed in mak­ing objects with which we expe­ri­ence spe­cial moments, even on an ordi­nary day.” The names of many of the objects also hint at real-life sto­ries – they often sug­gest friends and col­leagues of Bořek Šípek, or his­tor­i­cal figures.

“The essence of archi­tec­ture is not objec­tive truth, but cap­ti­vat­ing radiance.”

The joy of creation

Bořek Šípek’s work is full of joy, which is also expe­ri­enced by the view­er. That is why he also pre­ferred Bud­dhism to the Euro­pean Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion. While Jesus suf­fers on the cross, the Bud­dha is calm and smil­ing, embody­ing the state of men­tal and emo­tion­al bal­ance. There is no suf­fer­ing in Šípek’s work, on the con­trary – his art is a joy­ful part of life. What gave Bořek Šípek the great­est plea­sure and also respite was his activ­i­ty as a glassmaker.

“If you don’t know how to start anew, you end up being in a rut. I don’t like to be restrict­ed. By any­one and by any­thing. I like to try new things, new mate­ri­als, new prin­ci­ples, new methods.”

He was intro­duced to glass by the most com­pe­tent. After the untime­ly death of his par­ents, the famous Czech glass­mak­er René Roubíček became Šípek’s guardian. He and his wife Miluše Roubíčková, also a glass artist, had a for­ma­tive influ­ence on Šípek’s attrac­tion to glass, which first man­i­fest­ed itself in a series of designs in the 1980s and was ful­ly brought to fruition with the estab­lish­ment of the Aje­to glassworks. 

Bořek Šípek found­ed it in 1991, togeth­er with the mas­ter glass­mak­er Petr Novot­ný and the spe­cial­ist in tech­nol­o­gy Libor Fafala, so that he could cre­ate elab­o­rate­ly dec­o­rat­ed glass vas­es, cups, bowls and chan­de­liers that would be excit­ing to look at and inter­est­ing to touch. He want­ed to make them using the hands and expe­ri­ence of the best glass­mak­ers, right in the glass­works, with­out any prepara­to­ry sketch­es. In the Aje­to glass­works, use­ful glass objects were brought into exis­tence that were intend­ed to be enjoyed by their owners.

“I want­ed my things to be func­tion­al, not to be bor­ing, not to lose their attrac­tion eas­i­ly, and I want­ed the user to slow­ly and grad­u­al­ly find unob­vi­ous qual­i­ties, lit­tle pecu­liar­i­ties and pleas­ant sur­pris­es in them.” Ivan Kubela, the artist’s chief glass­mak­er, recalls how unortho­dox Šípek’s man­age­ment was. “He was a man of extremes, either it would fall or it wouldn’t fall, it would break… When some­thing did fall and break, we took it, put it back togeth­er and it was perfect.”

Today, in the attic of the Aje­to glass­works in the North Bohemi­an vil­lage of Lin­da­va, there is an archive of glass objects that were cre­at­ed there dur­ing the peri­od of more than 25 years under Šípek’s direc­tion. On dis­play are Šípek’s orig­i­nal glass pieces, designs for Dri­ade or Rosen­thal, as well as the Czech the­atre award of Thalia. The glass­works is cur­rent­ly man­aged by Lasvit, for which Šípek designed the Galaxy Lumi­na series of chan­de­liers, com­bin­ing his inter­est in his­to­ry with his pas­sion for blown glass, and the Pra­to di Fiori light­ing fix­ture inspired by a flow­er­ing moun­tain meadow.

“Design is not a path to a goal, but an art of mov­ing the goal forward.”

The Aje­to glass­works also pro­duced a small col­lec­tion of vas­es designed by Václav Hav­el. Hav­el, orig­i­nal­ly a play­wright, inge­nious­ly used the Czech mean­ing of Šípek’s sur­name (šípek = dog rose) to express how he per­ceived the per­son­al­i­ty of Bořek Šípek. His draw­ing, enti­tled The Elu­sive Vase, depict­ed the twig of prick­ly wild rose stud­ded with thorns. 

Cre­at­ed on the basis of the draw­ing, the vase made of Czech lead crys­tal glass has a sim­i­lar shape – large thorns cov­er the entire sur­face of the ves­sel in the shape of a cylin­der. In reca­pit­u­lat­ing many aspects of Šípek’s work and life, it becomes clear how fit­ting the adjec­tive “elu­sive” that Václav Hav­el used was. Nonethe­less, what is also evi­dent is that Bořek Šípek’s oeu­vre actu­al­ly defies all adjectives.

Czech archi­tect and design­er Bořek Šípek (1949–2016) is world-renowned artists. He col­lab­o­rat­ed with well-known com­pa­nies such as Alessi, Dri­ade, Lasvit, Leit­ner, Rosen­thal, Scarabas, Sèvres, Stelt­man, Vit­ra, etc. and received many inter­na­tion­al awards. Between 1990 and 2003 he served as chief archi­tect of Prague Cas­tle and in 1991, he co-found­ed the Aje­to glass­works. Bořek Šípek’s works of art are part of the col­lec­tions of pres­ti­gious muse­ums around the world and belong among the favorite collector’s objects.