* RARE 20th CENTURY CZECH ART GLASS AT ITS BEST! FUNKY MODERN DESIGN BY PROF VLADIMIR KOPECKY (ATTR)

* Width : 335 mm / Height : 78 mm / Weight : 1,733 kg. Excellent vintage condition; very minor signs of wear commensurate with its age.

* Shipping costs (South Africa) are R160 via PostNet. It will be packed to withstand an earthquake!

Škrdlovice is one of the 20th century's greatest forgotten glass companies. For decades, the company was hidden from the world behind the Iron Curtain, and the major contribution it made to 20thC glass design is only now being uncovered and reappraised by design historians and collectors.

Founded in 1942, in the midst of the Second World War, by the enterprising and talented glassmaster Emanuel Beránek, the company's earliest designs were produced using waste broken glass, peat to fire the furnaces - and a huge amount of raw talent and sheer determination.

Beránek Glass was nationalised during communist rule in 1948 and became Škrdlovice glassworks. Ownership was returned to the Beránek family in 1992 when it became Beránek Glass again. Against all odds, the company survived and flourished under Communist rule in the 1950s & 60s, exporting its vast and diverse range of colourful, curving glass across the world as far as Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia.

From the 1950s until its demise in 2008, nearly every one of Czechoslovakias best and more influential glass designers worked with them, including now globally revered names such as František Vízner and Jaroslav Svoboda. Designs were varied and absorbed influences from now well-known mid-century modern glass produced in Scandinavia and on the Italian island of Murano.

Like the glass produced by companies such as Whitefriars, Leerdam, Val St Lambert and Flygsfors at the time, Czech designers also did not merely copy, but added a strong and unique Czech twist to develop their own highly recognizable look (Mark Hill in Hi Sklo Lo Sklo, 2008 and Legends of Czech Glass, 2014). Further experimentation from the 1950s onwards used a rainbow of colours and a breath-taking array of ever more complex techniques to create truly world class designs.

In 1955 Dr Ivo Digrin describes glass from Škrdlovice as being of the same artistic value as Orrefors, Daum and Venini (see extract from his article below). According to Dr Digrin, the name of Emanuel Beránek, founder of Škrdlovice, "is mentioned by experts in connection with names ... such as E. Hald, S. Palmquist, V. Lindstrand and Tapio Wirkkala" (Ivo Digrin in Czechoslovak Glass Review 1955-11 p.24).

The factory closed in 2008 and no longer exists : with armies of collectors internationally now snapping up the magnificent items of innovative design produced by them, their high quality art glass is rapidly becoming harder to find and more collectable by the day... and sadly almost impossible to get hold of in South Africa.