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key to the company's success – in a time, when factory glassmakers were increasingly regarded as a superfluous, long-outdated cost factor, and when studio glass art got more and more intellectual and increasingly distanced from the craftsmanship of glassmaking with the body, pipe,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.

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