Jakub Glassworks – Tasice

Jakub Glassworks – Tasice

The Jakub Glassworks in Tasice was founded in 1796 and it is the oldest preserved glassworks building in Central Europe. The glassworks premises are operated as a unique open-air glassworks museum and it has also found its place in television work.
The set of buildings represents a unique conglomeration that serves as an example of the continual development of industrial architecture. The visitors to the glassworks can learn all about the two hundred years of the glassworks history, as well as how and from what an ordinary drinking glass is made.
 
In the glassworks, you can buy beautiful glass products from many Czech leading glass factories and artists. There is also a small glass melting furnace there, operated at irregular events or when there are enough visitors interested. The furnace operation has to be arranged in advance either by e-mail, or by phone.
 
Glass factories used to be established in places where the forests provided enough wood required for heating and making pearl ash. The same applies to the Tasice glassworks, which was, moreover, built in a place with plenty of quality quartz. The glassworks were founded by Ferdinand Čapek, a glassworks master, in 1796, in the place where there had been old glass melting furnaces from the 15th century. In 1844, the factory was acquired by the Rückel family who transformed it to a large extent.
 
After the costly reconstruction, the glassworks closed down when WWI broke out. In 1928, Čeněk František Císař first leased and later purchased the factory, and he managed to overcome the difficult period of the economic crisis in the 1930s thanks to his talent for business. During the occupation, the glassworks ran under the supervision of the Nazis and Mr. Císař was forced to stay on as a manager. After the war, the family lost its property due to a false accusation of collaboration. Mr. Císař could not live with the wrongful allegations and took his own life. His innocence was not proven until the 1960s.
 
In 1958, the Tasice glassworks manufactured ten large vases for the presidential palace in Mexico and after that the factory came under the Kavalier glassworks in Sázava nad Sázavou and the production of stained glass gradually transitioned to the production of laboratory glass. Many of the secret formulas, passed on from father to son, were lost. The glass market was not open to the world, glass products were only exported to the countries that were on friendly terms with the former Soviet Union and other European glassmakers took over the market. In 2004, Mr. Luboš Pipa purchased the dilapidated glassworks and started a costly reconstruction. In December 2012, Ing. František Milichovský bought the glassworks. It is now one of the twelve most important technical monuments in the Czech Republic.