Students of UMPRUM participate in the exhibition Krásná Práce in New York

The Krásná Práce project presents Czech crafts and folk art in new contexts. It offers a certain perspective in relation to original folk art, presents an alternative to the concept of today's interior design, and responds to the current demand for authentic and sustainable clothing. It presents Czech, Moravian, and Silesian folk art as valuable artefacts or functional, highly aesthetic products of home and clothing culture and presents them in the context of contemporary design, architecture, and fashion. The project creates opportunities for craftsmen of traditional crafts to collaborate with young designers to develop new designs. It also seeks to popularise traditional handicrafts among potential successors. It sees tradition as a multiplication of all past and present creative forces and brings back to life old forgotten techniques with a deep respect for the present.

The craft will die out with the old masters unless they can pass on their artistry to their successors. This is why the project seeks to attract young people and convince them that contemporary craftsmanship can be a model for a new lifestyle of returning to nature, the need for self-anchoring, and a sense of pride in our traditions.

The Krásná Práce exhibition therefore holds the spirit of passing on old craft knowledge to young people.

Sixty product design students from four of the most important art colleges in the Czech Republic joined with masters of traditional crafts to create a unique set of utilitarian objects. Young designers blend the sensitive updating of traditional shapes and decors with the precise craftsmanship of experienced masters.

The exhibition will present old techniques whose uses go back deep into history and which have been mastered only by the last few masters of traditional crafts. These include knitting from cattails, embroidery with fish scales, smoked pottery, and the scraping of leather costume shoes. "In this project, it was essential for the students to encounter the reality of sometimes disappearing crafts and to seek their sustainability for the future. They managed to translate the techniques into 21st-century needs. This could never have been achieved without the opportunity to work with the masters of old technologies, learning about them and their craft. Thanks to this, they gained a new perspective and respect for the craft," says Michal Froněk, head of the Studio of Product Design at the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague.

Among the more than forty artefacts, visitors can admire the works of UMPRUM students. We can mention Adam Kvaček, who focused his work on the processing of the cattail and created a modern urban handbag. Then there is Sofia Artemeva, who has designed a collection of accessories that respect the original purpose of the material, but at the same time experiment with its use at the level of jewellery, or Ivo Jedlička, who responds to the growing popularity of baking homemade bread and has designed a collection of ceramic objects that will facilitate the baking process.

The exhibited objects can be viewed through the lens of newly established relationships. Each object on display represents the relationship between two people - a young designer and a master of traditional crafts.

Krásná Práce is a long-term project of Družstevní práce Foundation. It draws on the traditions of Czech institutions which laid the ground for new forms of preservation of traditional folk-art production. An unexpected benefit was that most of the objects on display were made by the students themselves under the guidance of experienced craftsmen. That gives the project a whole new dimension and brings hope for Czech craftsmanship.