Brokis Brand Guidelines: The Blown-Glass Light

Brokis blows Bohemian glass by hand in its own historic glassworks.

Brokis is a lesson in Bohemian glass as the identity. A Czech house, it makes light from hand-blown glass — sculptural, coloured, paired with solid wood and metal — in a glassworks it owns.

Its identity is the blown-glass light. Brokis’s hand-blown fixtures — glass shaped in the hotshop, set against oak and brass — are the work it is known for. Light in glass. Breath, made solid.

(Honest notes: Brokis is a Czech lighting brand whose manufacturing is at the historic Janštejn Glassworks, near the village of Horní Dubenky. Its founder is Jan Rabell, a Czech entrepreneur and engineer — not a designer — who acquired the ailing glassworks in 1997 and launched Brokis as a design-lighting brand in 2006; two dates coexist and shouldn’t be conflated: the glassworks dates to 1809, while the brand dates to 2006. Its signature is hand-blown Bohemian glass paired with solid wood and metal, in sculptural forms, shaped by an art-directed roster of designers — its longtime art director and other collaborators — with in-house coloured-glass formulas. On production, the glass is hand-blown in Brokis’s own historic Janštejn Glassworks, a vertically integrated maker with over a hundred and fifty employees and Italian-style furnaces. It is independent and family-run, part of the founder’s own Janštejn Glass Group since 2022 — not an outside conglomerate. A small accuracy note: one of its well-known designers is Slovak, not Czech, and Rabell is the founder and owner, not a designer. Its fixture names and its designers’ IP are things we describe but don’t reproduce. There’s no official brand hex — these tones are an unofficial interpretation. This is design commentary and does not promote any product.)

Brokis lives in a glass-green-and-amber palette. Click a swatch to copy the hex.

Brokis’s identity is sculptural, warm and crafted — a glass green, an ink, an amber, a graphite, and a chalk. The palette leans glass-green and amber — the register of coloured Bohemian glass lit from within. It signals craft and material rather than novelty. The honest caveat: with no published brand hex, these tones are an original, unofficial interpretation, not first-party values.

The lesson is a glass-green-and-amber palette signals blown glass. Brokis’s world is a sculptural, warm, handmade object. For designers, it is a reminder that a material and a place — hand-blown glass, made in an owned glassworks — can be the whole identity, and that a coloured-glass palette signals that craft. Because a mid glass-green can fail as small text, keep type dark and let the colour live in the accents, palette and band. The takeaways: blow the glass yourself; colour it; pair it with honest materials; and treat any single hex as unofficial.

The register is a sculptural sans — clean, modern, crafted.

Brokis’s identity carries a clean, modern, crafted spirit — a sculptural, warm object. A clean, sculptural sans captures the mood: it is contemporary and calm, the register of glass as design. Set in a glass-green-and-amber palette, the sculptural sans feels clean and modern — exactly the personality Brokis carries. It is contemporary rather than decorative, mirroring a blown-glass light. (Brokis’s real fixtures and wordmark are works we describe but do not reproduce, and the exact typeface is not ours to use.) Because it is not ours to use, the honest description is “a sculptural sans spirit,” shown here in a stand-in. The type behaves like the brand: clean, modern and crafted.

Brokis stands for the blown-glass light.

Brokis is a lesson in making a material and a place the identity. A glass-green-and-amber palette, a sculptural sans and a hand-blown fixture make Bohemian glass the whole brand — sculptural, warm, handmade. The glass is the differentiator. The differentiator is owning the making: a historic glassworks where the glass is hand-blown in-house, coloured with the house’s own formulas, and paired with solid wood and metal.

Put to work, the identity is material and manufacture as design. A designer or founder building in this spirit would buy or build the workshop that makes the core material, master it, and let a roster of designers work within that craft, so the brand owns both the making and the ideas. The lesson Brokis teaches is that a material tradition plus vertical integration can build a brand: a centuries-old glassworks, in-house glass formulas, and a clean, sculptural design language give it an identity a brand that merely commissions glass can’t match. The hotshop is the heart of the company.

For designers and brand-builders, Brokis offers a clear takeaway: own the workshop that makes your material. The lessons: blow the glass yourself; colour it; pair it honestly; and be honest about the story. It is also a reminder to stay accurate: the glassworks dates to 1809 while the brand dates to 2006, and the founder is an owner, not a designer — the palette here is an unofficial interpretation. And it is a reminder that made-where honesty can be a genuine boast: Brokis hand-blows its glass in its own Czech glassworks, and that is worth stating plainly. Brokis made the blown-glass light the brand — proof that a material and a place can be the difference.

Keep Brokis’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.