Showing posts with label Slovakia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Slovakia. Show all posts

Sunday 6 August 2017

A tinker's craft


I have been looking for a present for my cousin's 25th wedding anniversary. It had to be small enough and tough enough to survive going in hand luggage. And this is what I found. It combines a ceramic base with a hand-woven wire rim attached by holes drilled in the rim of the base. Isn't it beautiful!

The dish is a good example of a domestic handicraft, which traditionally was hawked around the villages by Slovak tinkers. Legend has it that after the tinkers had presented the Empress Marie Theresa with a cradle made of wire so brilliantly that it would rock forever with one push, the grateful empress granted the tinkers the right to travel all over the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Much of their trade would have been in repairing pots or wrapping them  in wire nets to stop breakages. Mousetraps, birdcages, whisks, coat hooks, strainers, and other household goods were also offered. All the craftsmen needed in their packs were rolls of soft flexible wire, a hammer, pincers, and a stitching awl. The wire was bent cold and so no bellows or anvil were needed.

The days of the itinerant tinkers are over. But in Slovakia and the Czech Republic some craftsmen are keeping the tinkers' craft alive, adapting it to modern markets and I was lucky enough to meet one yesterday at a stall on Ceske Budejovice's main square.


Tuesday 26 April 2016

Guess whose exhibition was on at Spilberk Castle


I have to admit that, despite having visited Brno, I hadn't made it to the city's Spilberk Castle. I don't know why; it was always on my to-visit list and it is in the city centre. This month I at last made up the short hill to the formidable building.

Spilberk Castle is home to the city's museum and an art gallery, which features local artists in a permanent exhibition and international artists in a temporary gallery. As I walked into a castle courtyard I encountered a huge blown-up soup can. Yes, Andy Warhol's amazing graphics are on display in the temporary gallery.

The gallery was busy, but as I have observed elsewhere in the Czech Republic not so much that I could not enjoy the artworks fully. I doubt that it would be the same if the exhibition had been on in Britain. I had a rather limited view of Warhol's work based on his most famous works, but this exhibition showed Warhol to be more than just a showman, to be a brilliant artist.

If you want to see a larger permanent exhibition of Warhol's work you can either go to New York or you can go to to the Warhol Museum in Medzilaborce in Eastern Slovakia. When Warhol was asked where he came from, he replied "Nowhere", suggesting that he created himself. He, of course, reinvented himself. He changed his name from Andrej Warhola to the anglicised Andrew Warhol. His parents were Czechoslovakian immigrants from a little village close to Medzilaborce. They were ethnically Ruthenian, an ethnic group related to the Ukrainians from that part of the Carpathians.

Warhol practiced his parents' Orthodox Catholic religion and towards the end of his life started to paint icons. The first artworks he would have seen as a child would have been the icons on the walls of his mother's room. Knowing that suddenly we see Warhol's prints in a different light - in some ways he was always creating icons - of Marilyn Monroe and soup cans. It turns out that Warhol didn't come from nowhere after all.

Tuesday 16 September 2014

The Scottish Referendum Seen From the Czech Republic.

I have frequently observed that being a Brit in the Czech Republic makes me understand my own nationality better. It is a combination of distance and being around people who see things differently, who find remarkable what I have taken for granted, that makes me look again at my country. And thus it is with the Scottish Referendum.

Yesterday I was sitting with a Czech outside a cafe in Brno when she asked me what I thought about what was happening. My answer was that it was up to the Scots to decide their future and as an English person it was not my place to interfere. She leaned forward with a disbelieving smile and said "But what do you feel?"

My response was one I have until now not expressed anywhere publicly and that is that I hope with all my heart that they say no. "My grandmother," I added, "would be turning in her grave, as we say in English."

"We have the same saying," she replied.

This grandmother was Betsy, who proudly displayed the family tartan on the mantlepiece. She was proud of being half Scot and half English and 100% British, I explained. I added that what I found so difficult is that like her I consider myself to be British first and foremost and that being English came a poor third after being European and possibly fourth after being a Gloucestershire girl.

What being British means for me is being part of a union of different races, countries and cultures. We retain our differences and respect (indeed love) those of the others in the union. But the sum of the union is greater than the parts and as a result we have been able to achieve so much more as a country than we should have. It is the principle of diversity writ large and enshrined in my country's identity. It is part of my identity. It is a principle and an approach to community that has constantly informed my work of community regeneration. And it hurts like hell to see it under threat.


I can't quite understand why it hurts so much. As a believer in community democracy I should be supporting self determination, shouldn't I? But for the Union to lose one of its founding members is to tear out a key thread from the diverse tapestry. The Scots have done so much, given so much, that to lose them would I fear make everything else come apart. As I said to my Czech interrogator I am afraid of what will follow.

In response she shook her head in sorrow. Like so many Czechs I know, she grieves for the reborn Czechoslovakia which was strangled in the cradle. "It was bad," she said, " for both of us, but worse for the Slovaks. I feel sorry for the Slovaks. You know Slovakia?" I have not been there. "It is beautiful, more wild than here, mountainous, further away. They had more problems." The two nations both paid economically for the split, but the Slovaks more than the Czechs. "They lied to us, the politicians. We still do not know the true cost of the separation. So many things had to be paid for - new money, new offices."

But it is not really the economic loss that counts, it is the loss of what might have been. A relatively small European country became two even smaller ones, dictated to by German and other foreign investors and in the case of  Slovakia by the powers of the Eurozone. For the Czechs there was another less easily defined loss - one of identity. Even now they do not know what to call their country - they dislike "The Czech Republic," sometimes using Czechia or just Czech instead. In this I can see my problem as an English woman: I don't actually know what my country will be. I would like to think it will be the Albion of William Blake, but I fear that is more likely to be the England of Nigel Farrage.

"They lied to us, the politicians..." Indeed they did and indeed they do. The Velvet Divorce was agreed by the Czech and Slovak leaders without any form of referendum. The divorce was amicable, despite some arguments over gold reserves and the division of the military. A divorce is a good analogy and in the British case one partner is leaving the other, with all the anger, pain and insult-throwing that tends to come from a one-sided divorce. I would like to think that if the Scots vote yes, our respective leaders will sit down and negotiate a deal which works for both sides. But I don't believe it will happen. Already we see the peevish posturing and lies of politicians on the question of the £.

When the Czechs and Slovaks divorced both economies were hit and that was not when the world was recovering from a major recession. Fortunately because of how the politicians stitched up the divorce, the people of both countries were able to blame their politicians for their economic problems and not each other. The Czechs, when polled about which other country they would choose to live in, opt for Slovakia over any other.  But in the British case - one country will have voted on the subject and one will not. If England goes into decline as the consequence of a yes result, would the love many English bear for Scotland survive the divorce?

Sunday 21 August 2011

Music in Cesky Krumlov


Cesky Krumlov has been playing host to some world-famous musicians. Cura was performing here for several nights, whilst yesterday the town made national news broadcasts as it played host to a concert by Placido Domingo. As I drove home yesterday evening the town was awash with people dressed up to the nines, the car parks full and the police directing traffic. The best tickets for Domingo's concert were priced at 9000 czech crowns (at 27 crowns to the £ I leave you to work out how expensive they were).

I didn't go. I am in the middle of a tour and besides an outdoor concert in the centre of Cesky Krumlov does not appeal. If I'm going to pay that sort of money I'd rather be in a concert hall with proper accoustics.

But you don't have to pay anything sometimes to hear wonderful music in Krumlov. Last weekend the town square was taken over by Slovaks. There were information and market stalls in the centre and on a stage near the town hall I watched these wonderful Slovakian musicians. Their music is in the gypsy tradition, and done superbly.

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