At Designblok 2010 we exhibited the our one-off collection of stamps, which Antonín Hepnar designed exclusively for us, too.

The stamp and its skittle-like shape served as an ideal visual theme for master woodturner Antonín Hepnar, who has created six types of stamp handles for three various sizes of our logo. Thus, the reduced variants of the designer’s candlesticks and lamps represent a completely new, intimate, and 100% functional application of Hepnar’s style.

Photo by Jaroslav Moravec

We pay attention to every detail in our expositions every time. Small paper and print items like various callouts we make always by hand in great Studio Činčera. For the past Designblok 2010 we had to make a lot of callouts for our two exhibitions there. For Retrospective of the Light we designed folded callouts to attach to the cables of the lamps, as well as folded brochure with nested postcards photos.

At OKOLO Environment we had small and big callouts explaining concepts of our selections of exhibiting products. We love work with paper on these small but very important details.

Thank You for help in Studio Činčera, too.

Our exhibition Retrospective of the Light received 9th October one of the Editor in Chiefs prizes in special category for the Extraordinary Enterprise at Designblok 2010. Thank You for it.

Here are the official pictures and text about the lightning design of Antonín Hepnar.

Design of lights in all versions – table, floor, wall, and suspension – has always represented the creative mainstay of Antonín Hepnar’s work. This fan of wood and clearly turned shapes has been active in the field of applied arts since the second half of the 1950.

Antonín Hepnar is one of the designers who have never had to rely on the poor possibilities of domestic industrial production under the previous regime. On the contrary, his creative motto, based primarily on handicraft and an essential workshop background, enabled him to experiment and create unique interior products of unparalleled visual and manufacturing quality during that time. The designer decided right at the start of his career to focus on lights, apart from candlesticks, bowls, and sculptures. Thus, the lamps he made in limited small-lot productions, sold exclusively in the Dílo showroom, currently rank among the exceptional artifacts that document the field of handmade original design under totalitarianism.


All the exhibited lighting objects work with the basic archetypal shapes and thus become surprisingly atemporal. The turned rotational shapes urged the designer to apply them to the design of lights. The combination with metal, glass, and other materials gave birth to a compact set of illuminants that demonstrate the designer’s development during his intensive work, spanning thirty years. His first designs made during his studies indicate the impact of the post-war decorative and organic style, which is, nevertheless, transformed into personal and precise handiwork. For Hepnar’s lights, the 1970s meant a time of pure simple elementary shapes that are sometimes more or less influenced by a decorative aspect that the designer discovered while furnishing or restoring interiors. The symbol of a circle becomes one of Hepnar’s specific shapes, which he applies in his typically intimate wall lamps, thus creating extraordinary lighting effects thanks to the lathe-turned surface. In the 1980s, the designer carried out new experiments mainly with halogen lights. The exhibition symbolically finishes with a terse table lamp in the form of a rocket, which won the Good Design Award in 1991. Its essential form is a timeless evidence of how the entire work of this significant Czech designer and artist is still relevant.

photos by Jaroslav Moravec

As a part of our The Things collection we present prototype of bottle opener, which designed Martin Žampach for us. See it at Designblok in Prague, Czech republic this week.

The shape of the our logo became the natural shape of the steel bottle opener, which was designed for OKOLO by Martin Žampach. Functional, as well as symbolical, our opener is a everyday use object with simple and everyday looking form.

The passion for ordinary objects from the socialist era has brought forth an inventive design that follows up the tradition of conceptual and ironic production. Martin Prokeš managed to collect several dozen Bona mustard glasses in a relatively short time and found inspiration in their simplicity and graphic quality when designing the Bona wine glass with a simply attached elegant glass stem. The plastic cap crowns the complexity of his design.

For this light humor and irony we like it very much. Now. Bona is one of the products including in OKOLO The Things collection. See it or buy it in our installation OKOLO Environment at Designblok in Prague, Czech republic.

Designer and brilliant woodturner Antonín Hepnar, who has refined his specific creative code since the 1950s, has ranked among our collaborators since the beginning. Thus, it is no wonder our collection The Things contains several of his objects. Hepnar took two timeless candlestick designs from 1970 and 1971 from his archive and made a limited collection of 25 pieces exclusively for us. The former represents the typical aspect of Hepnar’s production, characterized by perfect exquisite shapes and outstanding craftsmanship. The latter is a variable game of practical wooden modules from which one can assemble a candlestick of a desired height. Moreover, either a classically tall candle or a tea light candle can be attached to each module.



Right now we are preparing the exhibition called Retrospective of the Light at Designblok in Prague. Our selection of lights from 1953 - 1989 by late czech designer Antonín Hepnar will be completed at the beginning of the next week. But visual style for the exhibition is ready now. Inspired by some of Hepnar`s lightning creations, we redesigned our logo into the simplified shape of a table lamp.

OKOLO launches at Designblok 2010 in Prague, Czech republic own collection of products called The Things including designs by Antonín Hepnar, Tomáš Král and Camille Blin, Martin Prokeš, Studio Činčera and Martin Žampach next week

I am very pleased that I can introduce our first collaboration with Tomáš Král and Camille Blin now.

The extremely aesthetical, highly elegant, and functionally professional design of the designers from the ECAL in Lausanne won our hearts right away. For this reason, we decided to start a cooperation with two designers whose names are inseparably linked with Lausanne. Tomáš Král and Camille Blin represent the current virtuoso design, combined with a light conceptual approach and poetic interpretation of the given object. The Monster collection made for OKOLO, which is the result of their first joint project, contains a special case for four pencils Pen Monster, wooden block for storing writing utensils Stuff Monster and minimalist leather bag Peper Monster. We have equipped the first case with four different Koh-i-noor pencils, and thus created an ideal set for all drawing enthusiasts.

text from Tomáš Král and Camille Blin:

This collection was named Monster after our chance encounter with avertical shaper in the woodworking shop of Joseph Miele. After many weeks of mutual observation, communication was finally established. Each one of our objects is sculpted by each of its jaws. We have rendered the shape of its teeth to enclose some pencils. We have rendered the strength of its teeth with a black screw to lock in some pencils. We have rendered its skin to make a bag.

photos by Federico Berardi

Our very own collaborator Jaroslav Moravec created as his semestral work at the Universirty of Art and Design in Ústí nad Labem series of conceptual portraits of a designer and woodworker Antonín Hepnar. Five portraits was shot by him in the Čakovičky close to Prague, where Hepnar lives and works in a nice setting of his house-studio built from old barn.

Every portrait includes the one of the works by Hepnar, which totally hide Hepnar himself. Mirror, lamp or other art objects speak for their creator very much.

The series of the pictures will be shown at our exhibition about Hepnar`s lightning design. Called Retrospective of the Light, show is curated by OKOLO for Designblok 2010 in Prague, Czech republic.

Through this panoramic picture of the workshop of Antonín Hepnar (born in 1932) with the selection of his fine crafted lights we enter to the world of delicate wood craft of this hidden icon of czech design. The exhibition Retrospective of the Light, which we prepare at the Designblok 2010 is the unique occasion to learn something more about the history of the czech modernist design of the second half of the last century. Because, the curated show will present some of the unknown lightning designs by Hepnar, which he produced between 1955 and 1990.

In some next days you can see on our blog some special posts about Hepnar`s work, as well as about the exhibition. Today we present first representative picture, which was made by our very own collaborator, photographer Jaroslav Moravec. He created the original collection of Hepnar`s portraits, too, as well as the report from artist`s home in Čakovičky close to Prague. All the projects including the the edition of two 1970s candlesticks by Hepnar for OKOLO you see there later this month.

Retrospective of the Light, curated by OKOLO, Designblok 2010, 5th October - 10th October 2010, Superstudio of Designblok, Bubenská 1, Prague, Czech repubublic