Teroforma

March 27, 2009

Profiles // Tihomir Tomic

It’s not everyday you meet someone whom others refer to, in all seriousness, as “the master.” It kind of makes you think of the Jedi Council or a Bruce Lee movie.

The nonchalance dissipates almost as fast as the time zones when the journey to meet a master glassmaker involves flying from New York to Vienna to Zagreb, then driving through Croatia into Slovenia, past the vineyards and medieval churches until finally arriving in front of Rogaska Glassworks, where they’ve been making some of the world’s finest crystal for over 340 years. When you finally stand in front of Tihomir Tomic and he says “all I care about is the glass,” somehow it all makes sense.

Tomic (pronounced tohm-eech) has been developing his craft for nearly 40 years, first as a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and then as an apprentice to Raoul Goldoni, one of the 20th century’s finest glass masters and the former Art Director at Rogaska. In 1969 Goldoni selected Tomic as his protege, and over the next two decades, they worked together on an array of projects across Europe.

Given the years of training and dedication, you’d expect Tomic to ascribe his achievements to rigor and discipline. The truth is at once reassuring and unnerving: “The technical, you learn in school. You must use your technique to bring out what is inside…and that is unfair. Your technique may be perfect but either there’s something inside or there is not.”

In the small studio behind his house, containing a furnace that he built himself out of spare parts and discarded machines, he still experiments with new design ideas and new ways of working glass. It isn’t fancy, but there he is surrounded by the things that matter most- the pictures of his family above his drafting desk, a few sails, booms and surfboards stretched out across rafters in the ceiling and, of course, his glass.

[Teroforma has worked with Tomic and Rogaska Glassworks to produce its Issi decanters, cruets and candlesticks as well as its collection of single-pull wine stems. They are each made entirely by hand...under the careful direction of a master.]