Designer Ota Svoboda with one of the prizes awarded to the winners of this year’s Interior of the Year competition. Photo: Kristina Hrabětová.
What drew you to glass? Did you carry on a family tradition?
No one in my family had worked with glass before me. Originally, after graduating from high school, I wanted to study fashion design at the Technical University in Liberec, but a friend told me about the Higher Vocational School in Nový Bor, where she was studying glass painting. Glass captivated me at first sight, and it continues to fascinate me to this day.
The well-known “Soap” lamp, which you designed, is unique in every piece because it’s created by free-form blowing without a mold, so it resembles soap bubbles. Which came first—the idea to create “soap bubbles,” or the idea of how to create a lamp that’s unique every time and ultimately looks like a soap bubble?
A bit of both, really. A soap bubble in the palm of your hand pops just as easily as a nearly finished piece of glass on the blowpipe can shatter. It’s a matter of proper timing. At the same time, however, I wanted the lamp from this collection—which your neighbor might have in their living room or which might also hang in every lounge at Birmingham Airport—to always be one-of-a-kind, unique. In fact, all customers have the same lamp at home, yet each one differs in subtle details. Just as each of us is an original.
The ten originals take the form of deliberately very spatially striking light objects. Two crystal layers protect the cut center—a glowing egg. The gold version is for the overall winner, and the silver versions are for the winners of the individual categories. Photo: Kristina Hrabětová.
You started at Bomma as a glassblower; did you try blowing the “Soap” light fixture yourself?
Yes, whenever needed, I always helped blow glass with my colleagues. On the other hand, there were days when I was happy to put down the paperwork and pick up the glassblower’s pipe.
You founded the Glassfictions brand with your wife—what’s it like working together as a family? Do you ever have disagreements, or is everything always sunshine and roses?
I wouldn’t call them disagreements, but at the same time, it’s not always sunshine and roses either. That would be boring. We enjoy having time to ourselves—together and without the kids—when we can freely create, produce, clear our heads, and look back on products we can stand behind. We’re not only behind all the ideas but also behind the production itself. So we can only be angry with or praise ourselves.
Ota Svoboda during the production of the awards at the Bomma glassworks. Photo: Martina Vedralová.
For each edition of Interior of the Year, a different designer creates the awards based on a specific—and always different—theme. This year’s theme is “freedom of interior space.” How did you incorporate this theme—which, coincidentally, you effectively embody through your name—into this year’s design of the award?
I see freedom as one of life’s most important values. Above all, our inner freedom, which each of us must protect and nurture on our own. Similarly, this year’s awards—inside the mirrored egg—are protected by several layers against external influences and pressure.
What was the most technically challenging aspect of producing this year’s award?
Definitely the aluminum mount!
Ota Svoboda
After studying at the glassmaking school in Nový Bor, he co-founded the Borninbor studio (with designer Jakub Janďourek). He later founded the Glassfictions brand with his wife.
He currently works as an in-house designer at the BOMMA glassworks and collaborates on the development of all its collections. For example, he is the creator of a line of lighting fixtures called Soap, which is, in fact, the glassworks’ best-selling product line.
Among other accolades, the glassworks won the 2016 Czech Grand Design award in the Manufacturer of the Year category for this collection.
