You can look forward to a vibrant and creative program once again this year:

• Insights into our ongoing courses and open studios
  
• Workshops for children and adults
  
• An open-air concert featuring regional musicians in the evening
• A colorful cake buffet, hearty food, and refreshing drinks
• Plenty of time for conversation, encounters, and new inspiration

Support our Cake Buffet!
If you’d like to contribute a cake, please contact us in advance:📧 info[at]bild-werk-frauenau.de or 📞 +49 (0)9926 180895

Bring your friends and family, enjoy the inspiring atmosphere, and take the opportunity to (re)discover our studios, team, and teachers.

We’re looking forward to a joyful day together!

Over many years Masa brought Japanese young talents and apprentices from his workshop to Bild-Werk to experience and enjoy its creative atmosphere and learn from Erwin, Gretel and international course teachers. With his open heart and overwhelming hospitality, he invited and connected Bavarian friends and young artists to his country, to museums, glass art institutions, and, before all, to the spirit, beauty and creativity of Japan. Erwin, sometimes accompanied by Gretel or glass artist Ronald Fischer, travelled to Japan six times, for exhibitions and projects that Masa coordinated, but also to draw, paint and gain inspiration from Japanese culture.
Masa became the Japanese ambassador in international studio glass, and the Japanese voice of Bild-Werk and Frauenau. He was a mentor, a border-crosser, and most of all, a friend. Masa was known to turn up out of the blue, mostly alone, often accompanied by family or colleagues – and when he left, he seemed to be still here. It is unforgettable in Bild-Werk collective memory when in early years he carefully led a demonstration of a Japanese tea ceremony and introduced us to its fascinating philosophy. At the same time, he loved the humour and quirkiness of the Bavarian Forest, the party nights at Bild-Werk and the famous Kirwa village beer festival (where he was even seen dancing on the tables).
The last time Masa came to Frauenau, after the deaths of Erwin and Gretel in January and June 2022, was to bid his farewell to them, but not to Frauenau. On the 19th of August we, as daughters, in-laws, grandchildren, with Masa in our middle, sat around the large dinner table in the kitchen of Erwin’s and Gretel’s artists’ villa in Frauenau. At this place, over some 40 years Erwin, Gretel and Masa, together with many others, had made their friendship grow. They talked, discussed, planned, had fun, ate and drank. Now we exchanged memories and talked about connections, and journeys – ours’, in our time, but also back to the seafarers between Japan and Europe of old days.
Last week Masa’s and Miyako’s son Zen invited to celebrate his parents’ departure “like fellow travelers who meet each other on a journey”. We send our heartfelt wishes and condolences from Frauenau to the Hachida family. And yes, let us continue to meet and travel together in memory of Masa and Miyako.

Katharina Eisch-Angus,
for Bild-Werk Frauenau and the family of Erwin and Gretel Eisch

Masahiro Hachida
Brief History
1954      Born in Gifu
1987      Part-time instructor at Toyama City Institute of Glass Art
1987      instructor at OSAKA DESIGNERS COLLEGE Glass course
2004    Part-time instructor at Tama Art University (Tama Art University/Department of Ceramic, Glass, and Metal Works)

Parallel to the August Academy, a few board and club members initially worked on the Bild-Werk float. However, with time more creative minds and helping hands from the academy environment joined in. They hammered, drilled, modelled, painted and crafted from and on paper and cardboard. The result was an imaginative, colourful float with a furnace, a band, various Texas Bar and Gistl props and lots of flower power.
Here is a brief look back at the seven historical stations with which we presented Frauenau as a place of art and joie de vivre:

• 1950s: Rosa Donaubauer founds the Texas Bar and the American Friendship in Frauenau.
• 1961: The Bolus Scandal! Erwin Eisch and Gretel Stadler cause an art scandal in Munich-Schwabing around the fictitious artist Bolus Krim.
• 1965: Flower power in the Au! Erwin's glass furnace in the cellar of the Eisch glassworks becomes a meeting place for young artists of the international studio glass movement.
• From 1981: International glass symposia - glittering celebrations around the glass furnaces.
• Since 1988: 37 artists' summers at the International Summer Academy Bild-Werk Frauenau.
• 1990: Gistl - the green hell lives! An artists' collective takes over the Gasthof Gistl.
• 1991: Frauenau artists found the Männerhaut studio in the carpentry workshop of Schuster Isi.
• 2024: We're staying!

With musical accompaniment, Alfons Hannes and Erwin Eisch (or rather their Rauhnachtsmasken) and almost 50 Bild-Werk artists, wearing the obligatory Bild-Werk shirts, floral decorations and in a festive mood, finally set off and contributed to an unforgettable parade. For all those who were not able to experience the parade live, we would like to give a small insight into this unique event.
Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the success of our float!

Petr understood glass from the perspective of humans, from craftsmanship and the power of the (Czech) glass tradition - which has always included cosmopolitanism and cross-border exchange between glassmakers. His aim and purpose, however, was the deeply human need for beauty, which is another central component of Ajeto's global success: it is about the full potential of glass, which Petr unleashed by bringing glass and art together, from studio glass to arts and crafts, to interior design and from there to architecture, embracing kitsch, humour and joie de vivre.
Petr's colourful and playful glass creations, hand in hand with craft products and the artworks of his Czech and international glass friends, surrounded us visitors in the glassworks, in the shop, in the restaurant and in the glass museum in Nový Bor. We encountered them in the town - and soon also in Frauenau, in the glass museum and the glass gardens, and in exhibitions and benefit events of Bild-Werk.
Petr first taught at the studio glass furnace at Bild-Werk Frauenau back in 1994. When we had to close it down in 2006, he vehemently urged us to build a new furnace: glassmaking knowledge must be passed on, an international glass school without a furnace was unthinkable for him (same might be true concerning German and  EU bureaucracy, which prevented us from putting up a furnace 'just like that'). Since 2013, in the new hot glass studio, he has repeatedly taught summer courses, most recently together with his son Ondřej. Particularly memorable is the master class for studio glassmakers at the Frauenau Glass Symposium in spring 2006, which took place in the Eisch glassworks and took its inspiration directly from the glassblowers and pieceworkers around the same big pot furnace. Petr was not only the course leader here, but also brought his Ajeto glassblowers to the Bavarian-Bohemian glassmakers' meeting at the Eisch glassworks, helping (as he usually did) with both tools and sponsorship,  barrels of  Czech beer, and inviting everybody to Nový Bor.
The last time we enjoyed Petr's hospitality was in February 2019 at the start of the EU project "Glass Works". Together with our project partners from Bornholm, Ústi nad Labem and Graz, we planned our start-up training sessions for budding glassmakers right in Petr's glass museum in Nový Bor, in the very seminar room that had been set up to teach English to the Ajeto glassmakers. Today, when we engage for the future of glassmaking at the Frauenau "Glass Culture Campus" in his spirit, we do so with sadness and great gratitude to a great man.
Danke Petr – děkujeme – Thank You.
Katharina Eisch-Angus on behalf of Bild-Werk Frauenau

Bild-Werk has started a petition to demand financial support for the concept of the GLAS KULTUR CAMPUS (more HERE). This petition brings together the friends of Erwin and Gretel Eisch and supporters of Bild-Werk Frauenau and beyond in the worldwide studio glass community, and all those who have lost their hearts in Frauenau.
We call upon the Bavarian State Government to financially support the concept of a GLASS CULTURE CAMPUS and to sustainably secure the future of glass and art in Frauenau NOW.
Please sign the petition and let the heart of glass continue to beat!

After 4 years the GLASS WORKS project has successfully ended. On April 14 and 15 we will conclude the project and its accompanying exhibition with a final symposium in Frauenau.
On Saturday, 20 GLASS WORKS trainees will present themselves and their works/enterprises in a fair in the glass museum. Additionally, there will be demonstrations with hot and cold glass, a fusing workshop for kids, expert discussions and a guided exhibition tour.
We cordially invite you to join us on Friday from 4 to 6 pm in Bild-Werk Frauenau, and on Saturday, from 10 am to 7 pm in the Frauenau glass museum!
Take a look at the programme here: PROGRAMM GLASS SPRING

In 2023, the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung will for the second time award up to ten scholarships for participation in a workshop at the International Summer Academy Bild-Werk Frauenau. With the scholarships the foundation aims to support emerging artists who work with the medium glass, and to make it easier for them to start their careers. The workshops enable the scholarship holders to expand their professional knowledge and develop their artistic skills through encounters and intensive exchange. The scholarship enables the artists to experiment and to implement their own designs and concepts with the material glass.
The scholarships, endowed with 2,200 euros, are awarded to artists who, at the time of their application, have graduated from an art academy or completed their artistic training at a glass college or university of applied sciences within the last five years. For more information, please visit the website of the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung:
www.atstiftung.de

About the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung
The Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung promotes art and science. It was established in 2000 by the entrepreneur Alexander Tutsek and his wife Dr. Eva-Maria Fahrner-Tutsek as a non-profit foundation. The foundation is consciously committed to the special, the neglected and the overlooked.

The GLASS WORKS touring exhibition has arrived at its final stop! After 3 years and 5 venues in Denmark, Austria and Czech Republic, the exhibition will be shown one last time in the Glasmuseum Frauenau. We cordially invite you to the opening on October 29 at 6 pm.
The exhibition portraits 5 European glass landscapes with their characteristic profiles in international studio glass, applied arts, high-tech, refined crystal glass and scandinavian design. In addition, works in design and art by young glass artists, makers and designers who were part of the GLASS WORKS start-up training are presented.
Come and visit the exhibition from October 30, 2022 til April 15, 2023 at the Glasmuseum Frauenau!
For more info on the project GLASS WORKS and the exhibition visit: www.glass-works.org/en/