Jardiniere - Collection Victorie, Circa 1959

Emanuel Beranek  

He trained as a glassmaker between 1912 and 1916 in Upper Lusatia, Germany, at the Bernsdorf glassworks, from where he was drafted to the battlefields of the First World War. After the war in 1919, he came to Polevsko near Nové Bor. There he first became a glassblower, and later a smelter manager at the glass factory Rudina huť (Rudinka). In 1938, he had to leave Polevsko after the annexation of the border region to Hitler's Germany.

In 1940, he moved to Škrdlovice and together with his brothers Bohuslav (1901 – 1984) and Jindřich (1908 – 1993) founded a small and very simple glass factory. Primitive conditions did not allow the production of quality glass. However, the Beránková brothers turned the disadvantage into an advantage and began to produce their specialty from bubbled and impure glass: densely shaped glass. This semi-transparent to opaque solid glass, which was soon imitated by large companies, was sold on the market under the name "antique". The unique glass also caught the attention of artists. From 1943, Beránk's factory cooperated, for example, with the companies of František Zemko and J. Vydry, director of the school of arts and crafts in Brno. Typical products of the Škrdlovice glass factory were already exported abroad during the Second World War, especially to Sweden and Switzerland.

After the Second World War, the glass factory was modernized and its products won prizes at exhibitions, for example in Zurich, Stockholm, Rotterdam. In the years 1948 – 1949, after nationalization, it was considered for its liquidation, due to pressure from artists, the glass factory was incorporated into the Center for Folk Arts and Crafts (1956). Emanuel Beránek led the Škrdlovica glassworks until 1959. Even after his retirement, the production focused on densely shaped glass. From the second half of the sixties, Jaroslav Svoboda and František Vízner significantly influenced her production.

After 1990, the glass factory returned to the property of the Beránek family,