In memory of Petr Novotný (1952 – 2024)

These days we received the sad news that Petr Novotný passed away on Friday, 3 May 2024. We mourn the loss of a bridge builder to whom the Frauenau glass community owes a great deal.
Petr's friendship and his commitment go back to the 1980s, to the first International Glass Symposia and exchanges between the glassmaking towns of Nový Bor and Frauenau, which were still separated by the Iron Curtain at the time. When Petr then founded his own glassworks in Lindava with the momentum of the Velvet Revolution, he was and remained a glassblower first and foremost. The glassblowers, the co-operation on the work floor and the collaboration with designers at the blowpipe also formed the heart of the Ajeto glassworks: Looking into the furnace hall Petr never grew tired of explaining to his amazed visitors that this was the key to the company's success – in a time, when factory glassmakers were increasingly regarded as a superfluous, long-outdated cost factor, and when studio glass art got more and more intellectual and increasingly distanced from the craftsmanship of glassmaking with the body, pipe, paintbrush, the grinding and engraving wheel.

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