The large compendium titled Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild contains two volumes devoted to Bohemia (1894 and 1896) and one volume devoted to Moravia and Silesia (1897). Chapters on folk culture are accompanied by a plethora of pictures, a significant number of which depict rural residents wearing traditional dress. However, the informative value of illustrations depicting folk costumes from Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia as a source for ethnological research is limited. The unbalanced selection of examples from individual regions is problematic. Understandably, a great emphasis was placed on the German ethnic group, but even ethnographic regions inhabited by Czech population are not represented proportionally to the preservation of traditional culture, so the resulting visual perception does not even correspond to the reality in the late nineteenth century. Czech painters were addressed to illustrate two volumes about Bohemia, but the Moravia and Silesia volume was illustrated almost exclusively by artists with ties to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, where they studied or taught, and to the imperial court. However, not only Viennese, but even all Czech painters had no direct experience with the folk culture in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. They worked according to supplied photographs, the availability of which eventually influenced the choice of illustrations. The successful level of both the drawing and painting templates and their xylographic treatments posed a positive aspect. And what is essential - the comparison with the traced model photographs confirms their basically faithful interpretation. Even so, the ethnologist cannot underestimate the critical insight into the documentary value of the illustrations accompanying the admirably monumental work Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild, named Kronprinzenwerk after its initiator and partly co-author, Crown Prince Rudolf.
Although researchers showed their high interest in culture of the ethnographic area of Chodsko, there have survived few reports and interpretations relating to bead embellishment of Chodsko folk costumes. Nevertheless, beadwork evolved into an absolutely original type of decorations in this region. Alongside the newer type of folk costumes, created in the second half of the 19th century in the ethnographic area of Chodsko, beaded decoration in its originality continued being used for several generations even though the function of folk costumes changed. Many-coloured beadwork made of small false garnets, rocailles and sequins in compositions completed with so-called dracoun (a metal profiled wire wound around a core of textile) or bullion created different and specific combinations and modifications of style influence, folk creativity and quite modern decorative materials both in the “lower” and “upper” villages of the ethnographic area of Chodsko.
For many years, the attention of specialists has been aimed at
Těšín folk costumes decorated with silver jewellery. They are the result of a gradual diffusion of city jewellers’ products among wealthier countrymen; amateur craftsmen (so called fušeři - dabblers) used to make jewellery for less wealthy people. Jablunkov and Těšín were main centres of this production.
Jewellery was primarily made of silver, but copper, tin, lead and later new materials (German silver) were used as well. The most common methods of making silver jewellery were casting (the oldest technology), extrusion and filigree. There are following types of jewellery: hooks, belts, buttons, chains, necklaces and different brooches. Grotesque, arabesque, auriculated and also zoomorphic (lion, bird, lamb) and anthropomorphic (king David, angel) ornaments prevail on the oldest jewellery. Silver belts became the height of art and craftsmanship of Těšín jewellers’ work. The most extensive and comprehensive collection of Těšín silver folk
costume jewellery is owned by the Museum of Těšínsko in Český
Těšín.
Painter M. Fischerová-Kvěchová (1892-1984), graduate of Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (1906-1913), draw inspiration mainly from folk art and children’s world. Their reflection permeated all areas of her Work. In her drawings, including illustrations, in paintings, as well as in textile works - in her fashion designs, in designs of “suits” for puppets, in designs of printed textiles. From the middle of the 1910’s she worked as a designer of fashions for children, ladies and also as designer of shoes for Prague cooperative „Zádruha". In this work she drew on her knowledge of patterns, colors, and decorations of folk costumes, gained through her explorational journeys in the Czech lands, to Slovakia and the Balkans. She made a great number of study drawings and high quality studies of costumes. In the year 1925 she was awarded a gold medal in the International exhibition of applied arts and industry in Paris for “textile works”. In the I920s and at the beginning of the 1930s she abandoned the Creative transpositions of folk costumes. Instead, she promoted the “style dress” concept. In other words, the envisioned the design of timeless quality, composed mainly on the basis of aesthetical and functional principles, supplemented by applied components of folk textiles (for example, embroidery). In the second half of the 1930s she designed more than thirty designs of “peculiar” printed textiles for prestigious textile company Josef Sochor of Králův Dvůr. Four of these were realized. Through this work, the painter wrested an important role in the “Czech peculiar” movement.