COUNTDOWN CHRISTMAS:
Molnar Glass
Pavel Molnar was born in 1940 in Vojnice, in the former Czechoslovakia and earned his training as a glass artist at the renowned Czech Institute of Glass Making in Zelezny Brod. Practicing mainly lamp-blown techniques, he also began working in the so-called metallurgical engineering at the furnace as early as 1968. As his artistic style evolved, he began applying the technique of sandblasting and imagined new ideas for coloring by using special mixtures of metal oxides.
A significant turning point in Pavel’s glassmaking career took place in 1974, when he received the Danner’s Art Foundation award in Munich which attracted the attention of glass collectors the world over. In 1983, he was invited to teach in The United States at The Pilchuck Glass School, an international center for glass art education founded in 1971 by
Dale Chihuly.
Pavel’s glassblowing styles and techniques began to be utilized by glass artists around the world. Pavel’s personal contributions to the field of blown glass as an artist, innovator, craftsman, businessman, teacher, and cultural figure have led experts to describe him as a pioneer of German studio glass and rank him among the world’s most creative glass designers. His works in cast glass sculpture and delicately lamp-worked vessels appear in the collections of more than one hundred major museums and galleries around the world including The Corning Museum of Glass in New York.