Crystals, Castles, Seas, and Stars

Wenzel Hablik was a child of Bohemia where, as early as the sixteenth century, glassmakers fused silica, lead oxide, and potassium carbonate together to produce an exceptionally hard, colorless, and brilliantly transparent glass – called “crystal” after its resemblance to natural rock crystals. A versatile craftsman who designed jewelry, furniture, ceramics, lamps, fashion, fabrics, and more, he embodied the Art Nouveau ethos that blurred the lines between high art and applied art – the great vs. the lesser arts. On his letterhead, however, Hablik described himself merely as a “painter and engraver.” Indeed, it was through the practice of those two disciplines that the cultural influences in which he had steeped his boundless imagination achieved their most visionary manifestation. Hablik’s dreams bespoke a blend of utopian yearnings and pure science fiction, not unlike his contemporary, the oneiric writer Paul Scheerbart: his was a world that took crystalline form, for crystals – transparent, geometric, models of perfection – pointed the way to the colonization of the celestial spheres.