Many companies preserve their expertise for decades, and
sometimes it is slumbering beneath the surface and must be rediscovered
and awakened. In such cases, Tilla Goldberg digs deeper: “If you can
do all of that, perhaps you can also do this?” Usually, the owners start
recalling how their parents or even grandparents dealt with a comparable
detail. “‘Let me sleep on it over the weekend’ is a sentence I often hear,”
she says. “You see the sparkle in their eyes and know that they’re already
thinking about it.” Sometimes, she gets an email exclaiming “I got it!”
and the solution at four o’clock in the morning.
It is reasonable to compare ClassiCon furniture with haute
couture. Its production, as is the case in the top tier of fashion, keeps
special knowledge and skills from disappearing. They remain alive
because they are newly challenged time and again. The glass blowing
workshop manufacturing the base for Sebastian Herkner’s “Bell Table”
is a perfect example. Founded in 1544 and still family-managed, it has
preserved the knowledge of classic products such as goblets, vases and
bottles for 15 generations. However, the market for them has become
increasingly smaller, and competition from Czechia increasingly
bigger. Dealing with the production of the big, heavy bases of the “Bell
Table”, which consist of a single piece, was an entirely new challenge:
15 kilograms of hot glass that must be held by the blower, turned and
blown in a large, manually wood-turned mould, over and over until the
characteristic bell shape emerges. The wooden moulds are dark, and “the
glass blowers are practically blowing into the abyss,” Sebastian Herkner
explains. “And yet they know when the glass reaches the bottom of the
mould, when it rises at the sides, and when it has the same thickness
everywhere.” This requires experience. It takes between four and five
years before a craftsperson is skilled enough, and the youngsters among
them are only allowed to make the last piece of a base as training. “Before
the lunch break or the end of the working day,” says the manager. His
business has gained a new, contemporary profile due to the “Bell Table”.
At the same time, it has remained true to itself. It, too, has now become
both “classic” and “contemporary”.
