Organic Abstract Mid Century Art Glass Sculpture attributed to Ladislav Palecek for Skrdlovice, Czech Republic.

A desk sculpture, or biomorphic paperweight with rising dusty rose-mauve smoke effect. Highly polished flat base with bevelled edge.

It is 14cm in height, 11.5cm wide and weighs 1.4kg.

Skrdlovice pattern books show a smaller variant of this piece by Palacek in a different colour: paperweight (těžítko) pattern 6919/12 - Year 1969, Pattern Identifier 19, Height 12cm. 

This pattern is part of a matched suite of three products, alongside two consecutively numbered vases 6917/25 & 6918/10, all three sketched in a purple or violet decor.

An example of the smaller vase 6918/10 has also been recorded in the factory's well known amber-brown tone.

It is not known when this paperweight was made or whether matching vases were produced.

The smoky rose or mauve tone in this piece was more common in the 1950s to mid 1960s, often paired with pale blue or amber. The form is also closely aligned to the biomorphic movement led by Emanuel Beránek at Skrdlovice at that time, and reprised 10 years later.

Ladislav Palecek was born in 1933 in the Czech Republic in Hlinsko, just north of the village of Skrdlovice where the Beránek brothers founded their glassworks in 1941. He graduated from the Nový Bor Glass School in 1953 and within a few years began a long career at Skrdlovice where he became master glassblower and factory foreman, as well as one of its great designers.