Free and applied glass art from the Staatliche Glasfachschule Hadamar  

The small Hessian town of Hadamar, idyllically set at the edge of the Westerwald forest between Cologne and Frankfurt, has been home to a modern training centre for glass technology and glass design since 1949.

The Staatliche Glasfachschule Hadamar is today one of the best-known training and glass-processing establishments in all of Germany. It was founded in 1949 on the initiative of glass workers who had been displaced from the glassmaking centres of northern Bohemia after the Second World War and settled in Hadamar and environs and established new glass-finishing businesses there. Their aim was to teach young professionals their trade at a vocational school for glass, as had been customary in their homeland.

Thanks to forward-looking management with a finger on the pulse of the glass industry, the school has succeeded in continually optimising its training programmes to fit the latest developments and requirements of professional practice. In addition, the school’s directors and teachers have regularly had a say in amending the training regulations and framework curricula for the glass working and processing professions, thus creating excellent conditions for training.

The school’s fine reputation enables it to attract young people from all over Germany to Hadamar, and not infrequently also from neighbouring European countries as well as Asia and Africa. They come here to learn a glass-processing or industrial occupation, to do advanced training in the various techniques, and to work creatively with glass.

The multi-year full-time vocational school offers foundation training in the professions of glazier, glass apparatus maker, and glass finisher (edge and surface finishing, glass painting and art glazing). Other school forms in the Hadamar complex are a two-year technical college, a school for apprentices, and a preparation course for the master craftsman exam offered by the Federal Association of Glazier Trades (BIV).

But beyond the trade aspects, working with glass as a material gives students the opportunity to find their own means of creative expression. It thus comes as no surprise that many distinguished glass artists have come out of the Glasfachschule Hadamar.

In our new exhibition we present some 50 works by both graduates and current students at the school. The artists all have one thing in common: a perfect command of the various glass techniques, which they apply to reinterpreting and even breaking the rules they learned at the Glasfachschule Hadamar, each in their own way. The works on view are abstract, sculptural, narrative, ironic, or simply beautiful – unfolding a broad kaleidoscope of artistic skill and creativity!

Photo above:

Alexandra Lesch, Fischdrache, 2002  (Photo Alexandra Lesch)

Photos:

Elvira Bach, o.T., 1985  (Photo Derix Glasstudios, Taunusstein)

Fritz Prehal, Gegen den Strom, 2014 (Photo Lena Prehal)

Elisa Ekler, Schmetterlings Kronenleuchter, 2017/18  (Photo Elisa Ekler)

Gabriele Küstner, Deckelgefäß 3.B.2007, 2007 (Photo Max Hundertmark, Fotostudio Maxwell)

Samuel Weisenborn, Destruction,  2019  (Photo Samuel Weisenborn)

Thomas Kruck, Treasure Box, 2013  (Photo Thomas Kruck)

Sandra Urban, Seelenverwandte, 2017 (Photo Reiner Eul)

Jochen Härter, o.T.  (Wettbewerbsarbeit), 2017  (Photo Reiner Eul)