Rebecca Bell

My thesis proposes the idea that between 1948 and 1968, State design and applied art in Czechoslovakia constantly sought to deliver a balance between the exceptional and typical, creating a line of continuity despite changing political epochs under Communism. Through self-critical awareness around possibilities for craft, applied art and design, members of the cultural industries in Czechoslovakia during the early Communist period constantly sought to define objects via a spectrum of meaning between those traits that could be called individual or creative, and those deemed acceptable socialist types. In so doing they kept active a legacy of Czech discourse that continued from both before 1948 and up until 1968. Such a pursuit can be seen via the ways in which theorists and makers leant heavily on the values of folk and modernist art, craft and applied art to locate forms suitable for State-supported production.

The legacy of international trade fairs in the second half of the twentieth century still casts the biggest shadow in terms of Anglo-American knowledge and understanding of art and design in Czechoslovakia. Art glass and its overlaps with studio glass in the UK and America, and the influence of organisations such as the Corning Museum of Glass, mean that rich studies of this field have been covered in English language publications (Petrova: 2001; Ricke: 2005). Smaller scale works in glass, industrial objects and ventures into ceramics, furniture and interiors are less chartered territories. Czech scholarship is making huge dents into writing about applied arts this period, in particular from a theoretical perspective (Hubatová-Vacková, Pachmanová, Pečínková: 2014; Bartlová, Vybíral et al: 2015), but there is little in English. I wish to add to the English-language scholarship that enriches the field beyond art glass.

I follow in the footsteps of specialists writing about the Soviet Union with a particular emphasis on design, applied art, craft and connections to folk culture, as a means of understanding post-war modernism, socialist aims and the context of everyday and official spaces for objects. These include Svetlana Boym on everyday objects in Russia (1994); David Crowley on Stalinism and Modernist craft in Poland (1998); Deema Kaneff on the politics of time and folk traditions in Bulgaria (2004); Juliet Kinchin on Hungarian ceramics and the politics of craft (2009); Nicolette Makovicky on craft and modernity in relation to lace Slovakia (2009); and Greg Castillo on design for the home as soft power in East Germany (2010). I hope to add to their English-language discussion by bringing Czechoslovakia further into the foreground.

My case studies range from glass figurines from the 1950s, social housing interiors from the 1960s, film, hotels, and animation.