To mark the world premiere of Warning, Václav Havel’s previously unperformed and unfinished play, we have created a pop-up exhibition at the Lasvit Atelier in New York. At its center is a single artwork that opens a story reaching far beyond glass: Havel’s long friendship and creative relationship with Bořek Šípek.
A friendship that found its way into glass
Václav Havel and Bořek Šípek, one of the most distinctive Czech designers of his generation and co-founder of the Ajeto glassworks, now part of Lasvit, were close friends and creative collaborators. During Havel’s presidency, Šípek became the chief architect and designer of Prague Castle, where the two worked together on a new visual identity for a number of its representative interiors and objects.
Their friendship also found its way into glass.
For Šípek’s 55th birthday, Havel drew him a sketch for a vase. It became The Elusive Vase (Neuchopitelná): an object difficult to comprehend, but also, quite literally, difficult to hold. A characteristically Havelian joke built around absurdity and double meaning.
Šípek later returned the gesture. At the turn of the new millennium, he created Millennium for Václav Havel, a vase conceived around the moment between two eras: one coming to an end, the other just beginning.
The hands behind the glass
But there is one more person behind both objects.
Master glassmaker Ivan Kubela worked alongside Bořek Šípek for nearly thirty years and today continues to share his expertise at Lasvit’s glassworks. Their collaboration was based on a rare understanding between designer and craftsman. Šípek brought the sketches, ideas and sometimes seemingly impossible visions. Kubela found a way to give them form in molten glass.
After Šípek’s death, Kubela created a vase of his own in memory of his longtime collaborator and friend. He called it simply Joy (Radost).
A circle of friendship
Together, the three vases tell a single story of friendship and creative collaboration: from Havel to Šípek, from Šípek to Havel, and finally from Kubela back to Šípek. The circle closes.
Glass becomes a vessel for memory and gestures of friendship that outlive their makers, while bearing witness to a time that is inevitably becoming history.
See The Elusive Vase in New York
Discover the story, Václav Havel: The Elusive Vase, in person at the Lasvit Atelier in New York, where The Elusive Vase will be on view from September 28 to November 22, 2026.
Lasvit Atelier
51 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10013
Monday–Friday, 10 AM–6 PM
