Turning Dreams Into Reality

Marek may be turn­ing the dreams of oth­ers into real­i­ty, but his pro­fes­sion is not his dream come true. Cer­tain­ly not as much as it was for his father who, unlike his son, was always fas­ci­nat­ed by glass.

“We have a cot­tage in the Gratzen Moun­tains. When I was fif­teen, my father read some­where that there was an aban­doned 17th cen­tu­ry glass melt­ing fur­nace in the near­by Terči­no Val­ley. It had no pro­tec­tion against rain and was over­grown with net­tles, so he took me there to clean it and cov­er it with a roof. While doing this, I found a cru­ci­fix pen­dant. My dad told me then that it was a sign. That I was now under an oblig­a­tion to become a glass­mak­er.”

Part of the deal was that the first choice sec­ondary school would be up to Marek. If not accept­ed, he would train to be a glass­mak­er, to com­ply with his father’s request. “I do not even know why, I chose a sec­ondary school of con­struc­tion,” he laughs. “And I end­ed up eleventh among those who did not get in…” The future was decided.

At that time, glass­mak­ing struck him as a craft that is passed on from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. He would nev­er have imag­ined that he would be able to do some­thing like this pro­fes­sion­al­ly one day. His father took him to the glass­works in Světlá nad Sáza­vou, where he asked the fore­man whether his son would be capa­ble of work­ing with glass. The fore­man grabbed a broom and threw it at Marek. He caught it, the glass­mak­er con­tin­u­ing to look at him with inquir­ing eyes. “He can hold the broom just fine. He will be ok!”

“Once you get too con­fi­dent, the glass will pun­ish you. A hum­ble approach to glass is the most impor­tant thing!”

LEERDAM IS TO THE NETHERLANDS WHAT NOVÝ BOR IS TO THE CZECH REPUBLIC

Upon com­ple­tion of his stud­ies, he was expect­ed to start work­ing in the glass­works his father had estab­lished in the mean­time in their home vil­lage of Hrdějovice. It only took Marek six months at school to fall in love with the craft of glass­mak­ing but, after fin­ish­ing fur­ther edu­ca­tion in Nový Bor, he was inter­est­ed in going to places oth­er than south­ern Bohemia. Next stop: Leer­dam, The Netherlands.

“I went to The Nether­lands for a study vis­it and stayed for four and a half years,” he says. “It was an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence, I could prac­tice glass­blow­ing every day, spend time in the glass-cut­ting work­shop, melt glass… I learned a great deal there.” He found his niche in a stu­dio col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Nation­al Glass Muse­um in Leer­dam. When some of the exhibit­ing artists want­ed to use glass, it was very like­ly they would join forces with Marek at some point. “Sud­den­ly I was not just cre­at­ing my own stuff and play­ing with glass, I was mak­ing things for oth­er peo­ple and the result had to be up to standard.”

WHEN WORKING WITH GLASS, PILCHUCK IS A MUST DO

Then Marek was award­ed a schol­ar­ship to expand his knowl­edge at the pres­ti­gious sum­mer course at the mec­ca of glass – the Pilchuck Glass School. Out of the three hun­dred par­tic­i­pat­ing stu­dents, he was the only one from Europe. “It changed my life,” he says, clear­ly not exag­ger­at­ing. “There, I saw things made of glass that I did not even know were pos­si­ble.” So, he spent three weeks deep in the woods, a two-hour bus ride from Seat­tle, in a com­mu­ni­ty of fel­low stu­dents, work­ing from morn­ing till night at the glass­works. He hap­pened to be taught there by Jiří Har­cu­ba, one of the great­est glass engrav­ing experts, orig­i­nal­ly from Bohemia. “I nev­er thought for a moment that I should be any­where else, this was a once-in-a-life­time opportunity!”

“There is noth­ing in our range now that is more dif­fi­cult to make. Dune is a sym­pho­ny per­formed by five glass­mak­ers work­ing on one piece!”

His visa for the Unit­ed States was not due to expire until a year and a half after the end of the course. He intend­ed to spend this time as an assis­tant in the stu­dio of artist Leon Apple­baum. “I went there with the idea that I could earn some extra mon­ey and vis­it Corn­ing at week­ends, which is twen­ty min­utes away, and where the most beau­ti­ful glass muse­um in the world is locat­ed.”

But then his phone rang. Mar­tin Janecký, a renowned artist spe­cial­is­ing on the ‘inside bub­ble sculpt­ing’ glass-shap­ing tech­nique whom he bare­ly knew, offered him a work trip to Alas­ka. Three weeks lat­er, Marek was on his way. He and Mar­tin spent three win­ters in Alas­ka, sculpt­ing “inside the bub­ble” and ski­jor­ing (in which Marek also won the gold medal for Alas­ka), before they both returned to the Czech Republic.

NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE: FROM JAN KAPLICKÝ TO ZAHA HADIDE

“I was real­ly look­ing for­ward to this job, it was a huge chal­lenge for me,” says Marek, and even today, after more than sev­en years as a devel­op­er, you can hear the enthu­si­asm in his voice. “Design­ers come up with an idea that no one has ever tried before, and I have to work out how to make it attain­able,” he sums up his cur­rent job.

Although the label in the store does not bear Marek Effmert’s name, he has played a key role in the pro­duc­tion of such icon­ic objects as the Cool­er designed by Jan Kaplický or the Eve and Duna lightings
by Zaha Hadid.

Marek was mak­ing the Cool­er short­ly after Kaplický’s death and was sor­ry they had not met. Espe­cial­ly since he was the first one who suc­ceed­ed in devis­ing a method for mak­ing the prod­uct to exact­ly cor­re­spond with the design. “The Cool­er is sup­port­ed by two feet that must look like they are made of the same piece of glass as the rest of the ves­sel, but they can­not in fact be attached in any oth­er way than by stick­ing them on. They can­not be made by pulling on the glass because it would deform its shape of the cool­er. But I brought a lot of tools from the States that nobody knew here, includ­ing an oxy­gen torch. I used it to heat the body of the Cool­er and then attached molten glass feet to it. They bond­ed so per­fect­ly to the heat­ed sur­face that it is impos­si­ble to tell they were attached at all.”

“I nev­er want­ed to be seen much. I pre­fer my work to be seen.”

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD, AND THE WORD WAS NO

There is a Czech say­ing sug­gest­ing that peo­ple often end up doing what they ini­tial­ly reject­ed, and it is most def­i­nite­ly true in Marek Effmert’s case. He is lucky he learned to love work­ing with glass, and Czech glass­mak­ing is extreme­ly lucky he did. Effmert is con­sid­ered one of the bright­est stars of the glass­mak­ing indus­try. His exper­tise and skills as well as his achieve­ments are sim­ply unmis­tak­able and tru­ly unique. 

At sec­ondary school, he was lucky to be in the class with stu­dents who were gen­uine­ly inter­est­ed in the field, and yet today he is the only one of his class­mates who is pro­fes­sion­al­ly involved in glass­mak­ing. “After my gen­er­a­tion, there are no more glass­mak­ers here,” he says. Marek does not have to brag about any­thing, does not need to be seen. To be hap­py, all he needs is to accom­plish anoth­er extra­or­di­nary task – to make anoth­er dream come true.

Marek Effmert comes from České Budějovice. He com­plet­ed train­ing at the glass­mak­ing school in Světlá nad Sáza­vou and con­tin­ued his stud­ies in Nový Bor. He also spent some time gain­ing expe­ri­ence in the glass­works built by his father in his home vil­lage of Hrdějovice. Dur­ing a study stay in Leer­dam, the Nether­lands, he had the first oppor­tu­ni­ty to give mate­r­i­al form to the visions of oth­er artists. He is still doing this at Lasvit, where he has been a mem­ber of the Research and Devel­op­ment team for over sev­en years. In addi­tion to what he learned in Leer­dam, he also con­tin­ues to build on the expe­ri­ence gained at the Pilchuck Glass School and on his long-stand­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with glass artist Mar­tin Janecký. His name is asso­ci­at­ed with the brand’s icon­ic pieces such as Jan Kaplický’s Cool­er, Zaha Hadid’s Duna and Jan Plecháč’s new Hid­den Light. He also par­tic­i­pates in the devel­op­ment of cus­tom-made projects. He has been part of the Lasvit fam­i­ly since 2015.