The high artistic quality of Czech glass became known in the West only in the late 1970s. The artists drew attention to themselves mainly because they explored the sculptural potential of glass and claimed to create art works in their own right. As a result, Czech glass art established itself as the third European powerhouse together with Scandinavia and Murano.
Since the 1980s, it has been the undisputed leader in European glass art.

But already from 1945 on, Czech glass art developed on a constantly high artistic level. Little is still known about the early works of artists like René Roubicek, Stanislav Libensky and his wife Jaroslava Brychtová, or Václav Cigler, Pavel Hlava, Viadimir Kopecky, and Jiri Harcuba. The crucial factor for the high standards of Czech glass design was the excellent training at the glass institutes of Northern Bohemia in Nový Bor, Kamenicky Senov, and Zelezny Brod, but most importantly the severe demands for quality in design inculcated by the Prague Academy of Applied Arts with the teachers Karel Stipl and above all the charismatic Josef Kaplicky upon nearly all the artists who later became suc-cessful.