About the designer
Karel Wünsch
Karel Wünsch was a Czech glass artist and designer, born in 1932 in Nový Bor, where he also worked as a designer at the national enterprise Borské sklo in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s.
He is closely associated with the iconic Ještěd Hotel and Transmission Tower, for which he created the so-called Ještěd tableware set. It was made from vitrále, a highly durable material developed by the Technical Ceramics Works in Teplice, and from glass.
Because this took place in the 1970s, it was highly unusual to create a custom-designed tableware set for a specific location. At the time, all hospitality facilities were assigned standardized tableware strictly according to classification norms. Wünsch’s work therefore represents a remarkable exception — a design that could not be found anywhere else. He is also the author of the bent mirrored surfaces used in the interior of Ještěd.
