Glass and light

Today I went with the school to the Glass and light exhibition in the Museum of Decorative Arts.
The exhibition itself was kind of dedicated to the glass factory in Kamenicky Senov. There were nice pieces of nice ideas. It was mostly from the modern times, though there were also some pieces from the past times.
However I was surprised that most of the current exhibits were the final works of either high school or university students. Seems as if once you graduate, you stop making artistic pieces... On the other hand it's true that a lot of exhibits were quite unusable for normal life (e.g. glass sculptures).
Then I went to the rest of the museum. There were a lot of exhibits from other historical periods. At first I was impressed by the level of quality of the glassware, pottery and other stuff (e.g. clocks) of the past. At home, we don't have such beautiful pieces (though we have some that I like and have some kind of emotional relationship to).  But then I realized that in those past times my family wouldn't have glassware or pottery, not talking about clocks. In those times only the wealthiest people could have it. Today, those who are wealthy can still afford the same quality and even normal people, if they're willing to pay the price (which will be pretty high when it comes to hand-made stuff, but affordable if one is really keen of getting something like that).
Also it seems to me that e.g. in the time of classicism, everything was made that way, while today there are some styles that are more extensive than others, yet overall there's much more variability.