Designer Desire: Pavel Pánek

Various art glass designs by Pavel Pánek

Either for his birthday or Christmas a few years ago, I bought Justin a vintage glass ram as a present; he’s an Aries, you see. For some reason, I’ve always thought that the ram (the left-hand one of the three animals in the top image of the montage… and the amber-coloured one beneath it) was produced by the Kosta Boda factory; it was, in fact, designed by Pavel Pánek.

Pánek (1945-2008) was born on December 2nd 1945 in Znojmo. In 1961, he graduated from the Glass School of Applied Arts in Železný Brod. For two years he worked as a drawing teacher at the apprentice school in Bohemia in Světlá nad Sázavou. In 1969, he became the designer of Sklo Union Teplice, later head of the art centre. After 1989, Pánek moved to the Rudolfov Dubí factory, then to AVIRUNION, where he worked until spring 1995.

I absolutely love his knobbly 5135 vases designed for Rosice Glassworks in 1972. I’d like an example in each colour, if you please! If you are as taken by his designs as I am, there are examples available on eBay and Etsy.

Czech glass (otherwise known as Bohemian glass) is so affordable in comparison to much of its Scandinavian relations. To me, many of the designs are just as attractive and skilful. I think Antiques Roadshow expert, Mark Hill, is in agreement. He has published a couple of books on the subject; SkLO: Czech Glass Design from the 1950s-70s and Hi Sklo Lo Sklo: 1950s-70s Czech Glass Design from Masterpiece to Mass-produced.

Portrait of Pavel Pánekcredit

Additional image credits:

Pinterest | Sklo Union Glass

Designer Desire: Nabil Mourani

Nabil Mourani LP cover art | H is for Home

This is going to be a really, really short Designer Desire post; I found so little information about illustrator, Nabil Mourani, but still wanted to feature him. The LP artworks above are the only examples of his work that I have discovered. He seems to have specialised in illustrating 1970s jazz-inspired, Middle Eastern music. I love his covers so much I went off and had a listen to some of the tracks!

If any of you out there can shed some light on Mourani, I’d love to find out more.

Image credits:

African Grooves | Soorah Blog | Deskgram

Designer Desire: Juliet Glynn-Smith

Various designs by Juliet Glynn-Smith | H is for Home

We first featured Juliet Glynn-Smith (b. 1939) on our blog when we acquired a sheet of kitchen cards that she designed for Habitat. As well as being responsible for the illustrations in the shop’s very first catalogue she produced a number of textile designs for Conran Fabrics. These include ‘Prince of Quince’ (1965); the children’s designs, ‘Jackanapes’ and ‘Toy Cupboard’; ‘Lollipop’ (1966); ‘Petals in the Sky’ and ‘Daisy Spray’ from their Firecracker Collection (1969).

Although she’s best known for her Habitat work, she has also created designs for other firms. One such company is Hunkydory Designs Ltd. Three of the brand’s wrapping papers are included in the montage above; ‘Big Heart’, ‘Big Flower’ and ‘Big Stripe’, all from 1970. Also above are her ‘Fauna’ greetings cards and ‘Santa’ Christmas cards which she designed for the company the same year.

She worked for Parkertex – for whom she created the ‘Fanfare’ fabric design in 1968 – and for German company, Rasch doing designs for their ‘Contempora’ and ‘Künstler’ textile collections in 1973.

For Christmas 1967, Glynn-Smith designed a psychedelic screen print poster which advertised Thursday late night shopping at D.H Evans, an Oxford Street department store (now a branch of House of Fraser).

‘Zig zig’ and ‘Polygon’ (pictured side-by-side above) were two wrapping paper designs made under the name of Glynn Smith Associates in 1972.

As well a textiles and paper, Juliet Glynn-Smith also produced designs that were used on metalware. The square Britannia serving tray, included above, was for Reginald Corfield Ltd. in 1966. We’ve come across a pair of ‘Sprig’ storage tins for previously mentioned, Hunkydory Designs Ltd.

Image credits:

Pinterest | Shelf Appeal | V&A | Visual Arts Data Service

Designer Desire: Pati

Mosaic of vintage Pati illustrations

Last week, we introduced you to the work of US illustrator, Pati. We have a couple of his (or her) vintage framed prints for sale.

As you can guess, even though we found many, many examples of their artwork, we couldn’t find ANYTHING about the artist. Hence the reason that we don’t even know if Pati is a man or a woman, so no artist’s portrait this week!

Their work was distributed by Soovia Janis Inc. in the 1960s and 70s, along with a couple of other artists doing similar illustrations; Margot Johnson and Jacque. Perhaps we’ll feature them some time in the future.

They include food and cocktail recipes, star signs and the like… all in a colourful, folksy, quirky style.