Lucent Emporium

About The Company:
Lucent Emporium specializes in glass craftmanship and carries a series of fine vases and great sculptures designed and produced by a group of talents artists. Currently, Lucent Emporium is featuring three professional craftsmanship artists - Honner, Svoboda, and Wasserbauer.

Other Information:
Ctibor Honner
Born in Prague in 1946, graduated from Artistic Craft School - specialty painting on glass. Already in early stages of his career excelled and received first prizes and high recognitions in state-held competitions.

Till 1982 he worked as a designer for painted glass products for then state-run glass works CRYSTALEX. There he perfected his craft and became an established artist in his field.

Since 1982 he works in his own studio and creates beautiful objects included in many private collections as well as galleries throughout the world. Just to name a few: Naples - Italy, galleries in Koln, Frankfurt, Regensburg - Germany, and Dubai - UAE.

Mr. Honner also took part in state competition "Craft and Art" held in 1997, where he received an award for non-traditional perception of glass painting.

His elegant design is applied to the basic shape of glass vessel with paintbrushes. The paints range from warm, basic matt to high gloss metallic. Upon completion of design, each piece is signed and finally fired in the kiln to a desired temperature.

His faithful companion “Shmoutsie” assists in daily routines and spends a great deal of time in the studio.


Jaroslav Svoboda
Jaroslav Svoboda was born on February 9, 1938 in Sokolec - Czech Republic. Attended Glass school in Zelezny Brod, worked since 1960 in the glass studio of Artistic Crafts for eight years. Also graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University in Prague.

In the beginning of 1969 he became a director of the well-known glassworks in Skrdlovice which had been managed by the Ministry of Culture of Czechoslovakia at that time. He worked there for 18 years. The glassworks flourished under his management and gradually ranked among the significant Czech places of artistic glass production. In 1970 he organized the first meeting of glass artist - the Glass Symposium - in Skrdlovice. Up to that time the singular event was very successful and no wonder that it was repeated every year until 1974. Foreign artists participated in the last three symposia. Since 1986 Jaroslav Svoboda has lectured as a professor of the Faculty of Applied Arts in Prague. In 1990 he founded a private glassworks near Skrdlovice known as ART GLASS STUDIO SVOBODA.

There is no doubt, that Svoboda's output ranks among the foremost Bohemian artistic glassworks. His work shows his perfect mastering of glass craft in all its technological forms. Svoboda's interest includes three principal areas: design for production of small series, author's works with unique features (particularly blank glass, cut glass and melted glass sculptures) and last, but not least architectural articles i.e.: lamps, glass walls, little fountain, etc. He applies a special pin technique typical for Skrdlovice glassworks. Using it he makes tiny bubbles in glass and then he composes them into strict geometrically cut shapes. Unique, artistic products as well as articles for everyday use are made this way. He is one of a few artists who decided to use glass as a special, distinctive architectural material. He never had a desire to substitute glass for stone, wood or iron. Svoboda has always used the basic properties of glass i.e. optical features, inner space of molten glass and the ability to shape it.

He created two glass fountains which can be seen in the Diplomatic Lounge in the Palace of Culture. An eighteen foot long fountain can be found in the Czech Commercial Department in Moscow. A number of large glass sculptures decorate various cultural and social facilities in many towns in the Czech Republic i.e. Brno, Breclav or Jihlava. The Theater of J. Miron in Ostrava is decorated with an imposing 23 feet long chandelier which reaches the lobby from the second floor. Creating objects, sculptures, windows and walls he has contributed extraordinarily to the development of these genres in Bohemian glass making. The works of Jaroslav Svoboda are part of artistic collections in domestic and foreign museums and galleries such as National Gallery in Prague, the Corning Glass Museum in the USA, Frauenau in Germany, as well as in many private collections.

He traveled extensively all over the world and almost everywhere his visit was accompanied by the artist’s exhibitions. He recently completed one man show in Germany with great success. In autumn of 1994 he participated in the international glass symposium "Glass Ambition" in Novy Bor, Czech Republic, where an interesting sculpture "Head" came to existence with an associated series - "Ma". A deep thinking of the sense of life and relations and their transference into glass objects reflect his studies of philosophy, as well as his love and sense for the beauty of glass.


Jaroslav Wasserbauer
Jaroslav Wasserbauer was born in 1962 in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. His introduction to glass blowing, hand shaping and polishing took place in Glassworks Bohemia. Later he moved to glassworks in Skrdlovice, where he worked closely with well-known artists like Jaroslav Svoboda, J. Beranek and others.

At present time he is an independent glass designer of contemporary art glass. All of his products are geometrical, well-balanced pieces with interchanges of frost and cut, highly polished surfaces. Each piece is first mouth blown, cut and roughly polished then submerged into an acid. Once the curing is complete, only then the lengthy process of high polishing begins.

Color in his design is used just to enhance the perfectly balanced, highly elegant, yet functional decorative objects.