Josef Hospodka

Josef Michal Hospodka (* Jan 21, 1923, + January 8, 1989) well known designer from last century. 

Josef Michael Hospodka was born on 21.1. 1923 in Švihov. In the years 1938-1940 he graduated from the State Graphic School in Prague and continued his studies at the School of Applied Arts in the studio of prof. J. Holeček in the years 1940 - 1945. Then, until 1952, he was a teacher at the vocational glass school in Nový Bor, where he headed the cut glass department. 

In the pedagogical career of Hospodka, he continued at the school glassmaking school in Chřibská, where in the first half of the 1950s he led Saturday glassmaking circles, in which the basic collections of Chřiby metallurgical glass in a familiar form were modeled under Hospodek's leadership. 

However, the production of densely shaped glass did not fully start in Chřibská until 1956, when a new four-pan furnace was put into operation.

In 1958, Josef Hospodka became the chief designer of the national company Borské sklo, and from 1960 to 1964 he became the director of this company. 

From 1970 to 1985, Hospodka was the director of the Secondary Industrial School of Glass in Kamenický Šenov. Then, until his death in January 1989, Nový Bor was an artist at the Crystalex plant in Chřiby.

In literature and on websites, as well as in the museum in Nový Bor or the Gallery in Pardubice, huge, colorful Hospodka vases from the turn of the 1960s are exhibited, which have received recognition and international awards, but have never been produced on a larger scale - Fig.1 a Giant. 2. 

However, Hospod's other designs (Figures 3-5) have been reproduced and comminuted so many times in various shape and color variants until recently, when we talk about "metallurgical glass" everyone remembers this and only this type of product. Less well-known are vases with geometric patterns from air bubbles, which were designed by Hospodka in collaboration with master glassmaker Václav Šlajer in the mid-1960s (Fig. 6 - Fig. 8).

Less well known are Hospod's under paintings on glass. He created his first under painting in 1940, but he began to deal with this technique only in the 1960s. We can see one of them in the entrance area to the permanent exposition of the Glass Museum in Nový Bor.