Little Monsters

Designers share their demons for Lasvit

- Catherine Shaw

​One minute: that’s how long it takes to create a monster. ‘I don’t recall ever being fearful of monsters as a child, so my design is childishly simple: I started with a doodle,’ says Dutch designer Maarten Baas, one of 16 creatives asked to think monstrous by the Czech glass manufacturer Lasvit. Transforming those dark imaginings into Bohemian glass, however, has taken almost two years. The project will finally be unveiled at Salone del Mobile in Milan’s Teatro Gerolamo, a neoclassical puppet theatre.

Conceived by creative design strategist Stephan Hamel and Lasvit founder Leon Jakimič, the project has delivered a diverse family of monsters, from a mirror encrusted with googly eyes by the Paris-based couturier Maurizio Galante to a menacing stained-glass portrait by octogenarian artist Vladimír Kopecký. Eight of the pieces will be limited editions, Kopecký’s will be a one-off, while others will be more widely available. All form the Lasvit Monster collection, which will be updated each year with contributions from new artists.

‘Every culture and individual perceives the concept of “monster” differently,’ says Jakimič. ‘They frighten us, but also open up our minds, reminding us of our own limitations and inner fears. The question of what a monster really is becomes real through these artworks.’ 

The pieces, made in four of Lasvit’s workshops in the Czech Republic, employed both traditional and groundbreaking techniques including hand-blown, cast, fused and cut glass. Some pieces were even made using uranium, which adds a unique gleaming green. ‘It’s not radioactive,’ Jakimič laughs, ‘but we asked someone from the atomic agency to literally add one drop to the molten glass to create the effect.’