Czech Prints - Puppets

I was talking to my son this afternoon via Zoom and we came to the topic of Czech prints of puppets. As those of you who are regular followers of this blog will know, the Czechs are experts in the making of puppets. We had a wonderful puppet maker as a neighbour and I first met my friend, Hannah, when I went to her flat in London to borrow some puppets she had made. Anyway I promised my son I would share with him some of the puppet prints from my collection of Czech graphics.

The print above is by Vojtech Cinybulk (as are the three immediately below). Cinybulk wasn't just an artist of puppets, he was active in puppet theatre, which no doubt accounts for how many puppet prints he produced. 

It is not generally known in the UK that Dr Faustus was widely performed as a puppet show in Europe.

This print is by Lander.

The next two prints are by Mahulka. A regular character in children's theatre is Kaspar, a marionette boy. 

Here he is again, this print is by Grmela

and again by Borek

But this delightful little fellow has evolved from a more raucous immoral character that stems from the same roots as the British Punch. The change was driven by a change in target audience, with many middle class families having their own set of puppets.  

But puppetry in the Czech Republic has never just been for children. From the cautionary tale of Faust, through the devil-beating Kaspar, to the surreal puppets of Svankmajer, Czech puppets have always also appealed to adults. They have always had a subversive element. The Nazis suppressed puppet performances, although brave puppeteers continued to perform in secret. Over 100 puppeteers and puppet writers died under torture or in concentration camps. The Czechs rightly take puppetry very seriously.

Bottle stoppers and puppets.

As a former arts manager I have always got a buzz with helping my creative friends, especially if I can do so by introducing them to each other. So when my friend Kristina, who runs my favourite hotel in Prague, was asking me about identifying Czech crafts to sell to her customers, I immediately suggested the work of my neighbour.

I have talked before about  Jitka, and the easter eggs she paints and the puppets she carves.  Both the eggs and the smaller puppets would make excellent gifts for Kristina to sell. I am very much aware of how little space there is in the luggage  of those of us who travel on budget airlines. Stuffing a bulging bag full of treasures into an overhead locker can be alarming. Small non-breakable souvenirs are what is needed. Jitka has come up with  solution - hand-carved bottle stoppers. They are just wonderful - you will find more examples here on Jitka's website. I gave a load to my family and friends one last Christmas and they went down a storm.

The Bear and the Mushrooms

 

This is one episode in a children's television series shown on British television in the mid 1980s. It uses that traditional Czech puppet form - black-light theatre and it has a very Czech theme. All of which is not surprising because it was written, directed and performed by my Czech friend Hannah (Susan) Kodicek.  Hannah was the person who taught me pretty much all I know about collecting mushrooms and also introduced me to the Czech Republic. My son had a picture book of this story and loved it.

Jan Svankmajer

Our son is at Westminster University studying film production. He is a very talented scriptwriter and has just emailed us to say that he has come to the conclusion that his scripts are best realised through mixed-form animation. To many British readers of this blog the image of animation is of a medium for children. Not to the Czechs. Those of you who have read my earlier post about the roots of my love of Czecho will recall that it started with my job at the Puppet Centre Trust and an enduring friendship with someone I first knew as the creator of a puppet tv series. My friend brought with her in 1968 an understanding and love of the puppet artform. My son was a baby when the friendship first began to flower and so spent a significant and influential time in his childhood exploring her Blackheath flat with its collection of puppets and other Czech stimuli. I remember clearly sitting with her as she entertained him by animating a fox stole. His favourite book was a translation of a Czech collection of fairytales and his favourite character was the winter sprite (of whom I promise to speak in some later post). The book had very Czech illustrations with their combination of colour, humour and dark undertone. It is still to be found on his bedroom bookshelf and like his scripts can only have its width of imagination realised in animated form.

About three/four years ago we went as a family to stay with my friend at her flat in Prague. Near the Castle was a large gallery with an exhibition by the artist and filmmaker Jan Svankmajer. Here was and is an animator whose work could never be taken as being for children – not unless you want your child to wake up in the middle of the night screaming and telling you that there are snapping sheep's skulls with false eyes under the bed. The galleries displaying Svankmajer's two-dimensional work were impressive, but it was the last gallery that particularly delighted our son – it was full of sets and characters from Svankmajer's films, most strikingly from his take on Lewis Carol's Alice. I cannot adequately describe Svankmajer's animation to you: it is surreal, clever, at times slow and repetitive and at other times blackly humourous - it is very Czech. You will find clips of it on Youtube and there is a dedicated website on http://www.JanSvankmajer.com. One other thing of note happened on that holiday, our son made a point of getting up early enough to have lively debates with my friend about their respective views on films and scriptwriting before coming to breakfast with us. For a teenager to get up early on holiday is indeed remarkable and an indication that he was serious about pursuing a career in film. My friend has a lot to answer for (all of it good).

Another Beginning - Puppets 1

1988 - a street in Liverpool, the press are waiting. Then a limousine pulls up outside a rather nondescript warehouse and the press photographers start snapping the car's occupants. The occupants are Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. They smile and wave, but they do not get out of the car. They can't, they don't have any legs. They are Spitting Image puppets. Inside the warehouse I have organised an exhibition of television and film puppets and this is a publicity stunt.

Although Reagan and Gorbachev were the architects of glasnost, which a year and a bit later led to the Velvet Revolution and the opening of the Czech lands to us westerners, that is not why I consider this to be a beginning. The exhibition contained a huge range of puppets - Sooty, Parker from Thunderbirds, Postman Pat, Cosgrove Hall's "The Reluctant Dragon", Muffin the Mule, to name but a few. Before having my son earlier in the year I had worked as the manager of the Puppet Centre, the national centre for the puppeteer's art. And so I had had the pleasure of working with some of Britain's finest puppeteers.

I loved and still love puppetry - I loved the way you can do extraordinary things with puppets. Puppetry is a place where art meets theatre meets film meets magic. Now, any visitor to Cesky Krumlov or Prague will tell you that puppetry is part of life in the Czech Republic. Somehow there is something in the Czech soul that responds to puppets and the same is true of mine. There are two puppet museums in Cesky Krumlov and puppets with various standards of execution can be bought in many of the gift shops in the town. But that is not the only reason I consider the Liverpool exhibition to be a beginning of my journey towards Czecho.