Panel painting - Panel painting created within the framework of the In Circulation: Dechem Studio project

The panel painting was created as part of the exhibition series Circulation in the Circle, launched by the Contemporary Design Department in 2018. According to the concept, the invited designer will select an object or ensemble of objects from the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts, and will create a new design as inspired by the object(s). The fourth invited artist in the series is Dechem Studio from Prague, one of the most recognised representatives of Czech contemporary glass art. The studio’s designers, Michaela Tomišková and Jakub Janďourek, selected a book with a unique binding from the book art collection of the museum, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (80.84.1-2). In the second half of the 1930s, Károly Grill’s book publishing house in Budapest produced a unique binding from goatskin and marbled paper endpapers for the volume originally published in Paris in 1930.

The Dechem Studio designers reflect upon the appearance of the book, as well as its content, with their work. They employed lithyalin glass, a type of glass whose markings are quite similar to the patterns of marbled paper, to produce their new object, which is none other than a mirror of unique design. This hand-painted panel painting was created as a preliminary study for the “Hommage a Madame Bovary” mirror (see also 2021.459.7; 2021.459.9; 2021.459.10).