Museum of Architecture and Design

The Industrial Design Collection at the Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO) began with the museum’s foundation in 1972 and has been built up simultaneously with the Biennials of Industrial Design (BIO). The archive and the collection of works already exhibited at the BIO since the first Biennial of Industrial Design in 1964 were handed over to the museum at the time of its foundation. A presentation of successful collaboration between creatives and industry, the early focus of this biennial event was primarily on well-designed mass-produced objects. The same principle was largely followed by the museum’s collecting policy.

Included in MAO’s industrial design collection is also glassware, most notably the collection of Slovenian modernist glass objects. Modernist glass is quite rare in Slovenian museum collections. By and large produced for everyday use, these products have often been destroyed and lost, like most small and seemingly insignificant everyday objects are. MAO’s glass collection is built up mainly from the works exhibited at BIO, which from the 1960s onwards regularly exhibited modern glass products of Steklarna Hrastnik and Steklarna Boris Kidrič of Rogaška Slatina, or rather the Rogaška Slatina Glassmaking School, the two largest Slovenian glassworks; the latter was one of the major producers of modernist glass products.

One of the highlight periods in Slovenian glass design was during modernism, a period characterised by geometric forms, clean lines, lack of decoration, and functionality. It was then that Slovenian designers produced designs that in fact laid the foundations for high quality products, for innovation, and fashionable forms. In this way, they proved to be on a fully equal footing with the European and world trends in glass design between the 1950s and the 1980s.

MAO glass collection holds mainly works by older Slovenian designers, who after the Second World War paved the way for modernist approaches to glass design. Among these are glass products by Zoran Didek, who worked mainly with the Hrastnik Glassworks, and Franco Papež, who was employed at the Hrastnik Glassworks. The museum also holds glass products by Ljubica Ratkajec Kočica, Ferdo Pak, and Tihomir Tomić, who all worked at the Rogaška Slatina Glassworks or at its Glass School. An important contribution to the modernist approach to glass design was also provided by progressive architects, who occasionally worked in glass design. Among them, the works of Dušana Uršič and Živa Baraga Moškon stand out. Included in the museum collection are also individual modernist, postmodernist, and more recent glass products, among them works by Niko Kralj, Miha Kerin, Janez Koželj, Jože Krisper, Janja Lap, Boris Podrecca, Oskar Kogoj, Irena Hajnšek, Irena Franić, Marjana Bastašič Merel, Ljiljana Tepeš- Šolman, Tanja Pak, and Nina Malovrh.

MAO is in the process of acquiring a major glass collection as part of the estate of Janja Lap (1929-2004). The bequest comprises more than 90 objects, most of them original glass works, and some wooden models of her products. They are complemented by a rich archive of sketches and plans for glass objects, architectural plans, and just a handful of products for the Iskra factory. With the exception of a few early works, which are well documented photographically, this is the complete oeuvre of a designer who worked in this material from her student years until her retirement.