I spent most of my down time fixing a "red wine" Les Paul Epiphone for one of my friends. He purchased it broken for $100. The head was almost cracked off, with a pretty broad split running down a third of the neck. I ended up countersinking some screw in the fingerboard, to pull the neck and head back together. I covered the screw heads with ebony plugs, so the fingerboard looks normal, and will play fine. Several coats of polyurethane later, it's in almost playable condition; it just needs a new nut, and a bridge. The finish on the guitar was impossible for me to mimic. There was no stain on the wood, just a clear coat of red polyurethane. Where do you buy that?
I should post some images of the guitar, but I have a crappy web camera. I hope to invest in a real digital camera soon. I have added some images to the Jiri Trnka information (see previous posts below), so that it isn't quite so bland. Tne Czech to English translation is pretty dry and repetative, and it's no fun reading about interesting artwork without being able to see it.
Here's more Trnka reading... sorry I didn't type more, but I'm multitasking enough as is.Trnka had hoped to turn the Wooden Theatre into a successful professional puppet theatre. He had failed, but the failure had been balanced by the great success of his illustrations for children's books. He had hoped that his rag puppets would revolutionize children's toys, but his ambitious plans had come to nothing. But again the failure was balanced by success, for the exhibition gained him fame and opened the door to the theatre. It seemed that it was always his side-line which brought him success, and that, in the field dearest to his heart; he was to experience failure after failure. Yet puppets continued to absorb him and to draw him to an extraordinary extent, even when he tried to turn to other things.
Now orders for illustrations were pouring in. He found them restricting, like a suit of heavy armour. He kept trying to escape feeling frustrated, but then he would humbly return. In his moments of relaxation he would stoop over his puppets again, only to lay them aside once more. He was beginning to despair for ever finding a use for them.
During the period of 1940 to 1945 he scattered his energies in a variety of directions. His work during this time seems outwardly harmonious and well-balanced, but to look into it closely is to detect his feeling of nervousness and uncertainty. The word is varies, and at time the different pieces of work seem at variance with each other. By comparing them we can detect his price and despair, his fits of hopelessness. He felt that he was not using his gifts to the full. He began to work for the theatre: the real theatre, not that of puppets, and he also sought an outlet for his creative urge in oil painting and graphic design.
While Trnka had been preparing his exhibition 'The Children's Painter', he had met Jiri Frejka, the producer of the National Theatre in Prague. He already knew a certain amount about stage design, and from his work with the puppet theatre. Nor was he a complete greenhorn at designing stage scenery for the large theatre. He had already done some visual work in this direction, producing simple designs distinguishable from his designs for puppets plays largely by the face that the indications along the margins did not include such directions as 'neck 3.5 cm' 'arm 30 cm' 'leg 30 cm'. Back in Plzen he had helped Josef Skupa to design the sets for the opera Raduz and Mahulena by Zeyer.
But Trnka's exhibition, especially the insect diorama, showed his potentialities as a stage designer. Also he felt the need for work in another sphere, as a release from book illustration. And invitation to work for the National Theatre came just at the right moment.
February 1940 saw the opening night of Goldoni's Venetian Carnival, with stage design by J. Trnka. This was the beginning of several years' work for the National Theatre.
Scene by Jiri Trnka
Strakonice Bagpiper
Trnka's technique as a stage designer was also only at its beginning. But its basis was the same as that of his illustrations, and typical of him. He did not seek external motifs, so much as inner themes, concerning himself with the atmosphere of the play, its moods and emotions. He placed the emphasis on colour and visual effect. He tried to create and active setting for the play, instead of a static picture. His design for The Venetian Carnival was conceived in the form of a semicircular horizon. Certain sections turned and opened for the different scenes, producing and impression of a constantly changing environment. This horizon was simply drawn, and the actors stood outline against it. The whole thing was faintly reminiscent of a book illustration in Susan Discovers the World. He united apparently disconnected scenes and themes, so that they made an impact as a whole. He regarded the stage as something more than an effective setting for the actors: to him, it was an integral part of the play, of the ‘willing suspension of disbelief'. Its function as to produce enchantment: a dream.
It was typical of Trnka's sense of unity that he was not content merely to design the stage set, but also designing the costumes, and in his later lays went even further and involved himself with production.
The Venetian Carnival was followed by Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale. Again he used a simple, colorful design. The play was being produced at a time of the German Occupation, and the references in it to a powerful kingdom of Bohemia sounded a patriotic note. Trnka's designs showed his awareness of the new meaning the play had acquired. He designed the Sicilian scenes in black and white and those set in Bohemia in colour. He used tapestries in the Sicilian scenes to produce a sense of the past, while in the Bohemian scenes he conveyed the intimate charm of nature, the lyrical landscapes of his native country.
His meaning came through clearly to both audience and critics, who appreciated the note of optimism. It was perhaps the favorable reactions to A Winter's Tale that gave Frejka and Trnka the idea of producing a series of Czech classics at the National Theatre. Their work together reached its peak with these plays. The original intention was to produce a series of four, but owing to the Occupation, they were able to produce only two. There was nearly a year between the first nights of these two plays, but they show a common inspiration, and they represent Trnka's finest work ad a stage designer. Each is in his lyrical mood; each is a painter's dream. He never surpassed them in any later designs.
Trnka's work with the Nation Theatre came to an end in 1944. He had not finished with stage design, however, and later he entered for a competition to design the stage sets for Smetana's opera Libuse. He won the first prize, but the Germans forbade the opera to be performed. They suppressed anything which they thought might lead to an upsurge of national feeling, or to a belief that the Germans could be defeated.
This opera, however, brought Trnka his first encounter with the old legends of Bohemia, and it revealed his strong feeling for ancient traditional themes. This was something he was to develop many years later in his film Old Czech Legends.
Trnka's work for the theatre represents an important phase in his development. But it was only one of several activities he was engaged in at the time.
More Trnka information... again, from the "Artist & Puppet Master" book by Jaroslav Bocek, translated by Till GottheinerCHAPTER II
In June 1935, Trnka graduated from the School of Applied Arts, he was now twenty-three and had to face the vital question of his future career.
He had an income from his newspaper illustrations which more or less covered his current expenses. His work had been accepted by other publishing houses, so that he was no longer dependent on the children's magazine Night Time. But he did not feel this to be sufficient, and decided to seek a proper job.
By this time Josef Skupa had left the Holiday Camp Theatre, which, despite its reputation, as really in the strict sense an amateur company. Skupa had turned professional, and had set up his own traveling theatre, with the result that the Holiday Camp Theatre had been closed down. Trnka, acting on the suggestion of one of Skupa's assistants, wrote a review for its reopening, which took place in the autumn, with Trnka as director and stage designer.
Trnka's review was called The Merman. It was a grotesque piece following the traditions of Skupa's own reviews. It was a parody of the fantastic adventures and exaggerated pathos of sea-faring adventure stories. The stock characters were burlesqued by such figures as Captain Joe Flint, Legless Jack and Wild Sam. The plot was as far-fetched and accompanied by continuous back-chat. There was also a musical accompaniment which included parodies of popular songs current at the time, taken from the repertoire of Marlene Dietrich.
The opening night was a success, the reviews were favorable, and, after a number of performances in Plzen, the company performed The Merman in Prague, as guest artists. Again they were successful. Trnka realized all the more forcefully, however, that to return to Plzen with the Holiday Camp Theatre was no permanent solution for him. It was an amateur company which could at best offer only occasional work. Skupa's other theatre, though it was always traveling about the country, was really based in Plzen, and the suburb could not support two professional theatres. Trnka therefore rejected a plan to set up a new puppet theatre of his own.
Almost a year passed in part-time activities. Trnka continued to make his own puppets and he still earned his living doing illustration for the newspapers while keeping a lookout for more important work.
Trnka's opportunity came exactly a year after he graduated: in June 1936. On this date the two-man satirical theatre the Theatre in Fetters, run by Voskovec and Werich, moved out of the Rococo Hall in Prague. Trnka was able to take it over, and on September 13th of the same year, he opened his Wooden Theater with a play called Among the Fireflies.
Trnka had great hopes for this Theatre, and cherished secret dreams of outshining his teacher, Josef Skupa. His assistants were carefully chosen, and he was lucky in them. The staff numbered twenty-four. But it was Trnka himself who made and clothed the puppets, designed the stage, produced the play and took part in it. He also managed the publicity. Everything was carefully thought out, and Trnka had had several years of experience as a puppeteer. Success seemed assured. The opening performance was free to school-children in Prague. Trnka was hoping later to give children's matinees several days a week, and to produce plays for adults in the evenings.
Among the Fireflies was based upon a currently successful book, and Trnka thought it would be bound to attract attention. But it failed to win the acclaim he had hoped for. For his second play he tried the effect of a publicity stunt. Basil and the Bear was introduced as a play by a well-known author who wished to remain anonymous. Actually is was by Josef Menzel, and was a rough paraphrased of a Russian fairy tale. It was not the publicity, but the play itself, with its simple appeal, which attracted crowds to the hall. Basil and the Bear was the most successful play ever put on at the Wooden Theatre, but unfortunately it was the only real success achieved there. It was followed by Christmas at the Fireflies by Trnka and his collaborator J. Kuncman, and another play by Josef Menzel, Mr .Eustachius, the Dog and the Sultan, which had the atmosphere of an Oriental fairy tale, and seems to have been something of an artists achievement. But neither of thee plays was as warmly received as Basil and the Bear.
Trnka was never bale to put on any performances for adults. Throughout the autumn season the theatre just managed to keep its head above water, and the winter brought only a slight improvement. With the fist days of spring, the audience fell off, and the theatre finished the season only with great difficulty. It was never to open again.
There were several reasons for Trnka's failure. Josef Skupa had not turned professional until the fame of the Holiday Camp Theatre had been firmly established, not only in Plzen, but in the whole country and beyond. His name had, in fact, become a household word, and his puppets attracted theatre-goers everywhere. Trnka, in following Skupa's example, had failed to take this into account, and had turned professional before he and his company had acquired a name, or established a tradition of their own. Then, Trnka had also conceived his enterprise on too grand a scale to pay. Expenses were heavy: his staff of twenty-four all had to be paid.
There were other reasons, too. Trnka's interest in art dominated in his theatre, while producing was his weakest side. He did not study his audience sufficiently in his choice of play. The two plays by Skupa, featuring Dad Spejbl and his son Hurvinek. But these were taken straight from life, and they made a definite point about children's education. They were appealing to children for this reason. Trnka and Kuncman produce only an imitation: a shell, and an empty one at that.
The two plays by Menzel were more effective. Basil and the Bear, being based on a folk tale, was in key with a child's imagination, and ha the sort of simple poetry that children understand. It was the story of the peasant Basil, and his fight with a bear. The clocks, the chairs, the oven and the table, all came to life, and the cock, goat, and pig, all took part. This was something a child could understand without much difficulty. Mr. Eustachius, the Dog and the Sultan was more complex, and, to judge by the reviews and the script, it gave scope for Trnka's leaning toward lyricism and his skill in stage design. It seems to have been the artistic highlight of the wooden Theatre. But even so, it could not keep the theatre open after February.
Trnka was deeply disappointed by the failure of this theater, all the more because he had felt this to be the thing he did best, and he had planned to make it his future.
But, strangely enough, the failure of the puppet theatre coincided with his first major success as an illustrator. He was still earning a regular income from magazines, and his reputation had grown. Now he was invited to illustrate a book by Vitezslav Smejc, Mr. Boska's Tiger.
CHAPTER III
Because the puppet films through which Trnka became famous followed up his work as an illustrator of children's books, attempts have been made to trace the characters in his films, and his development as an artist, back to his drawings. This of course is a mistake, and can only result in the superficial, distorted impression. Trnka was a puppeteer before he became an illustrator, and puppetry was his dominating passion. His drawings derived from his puppets, rather than the other way round. His drawings, of course, had their own influence in preparing him for his later work, but it was of a secondary nature.
The fact that his drawing derived from his puppets is plainly shown by his first successful illustration. These were for a book by Josef Menzel, entitled Bruin Furryball in His Forest Home. This was an expanded version of Menzel's puppet play, Bruin the Bear, the big success of the Wooden Theatre. Trnka's illustrations were based upon the original wooden puppets who acted in the play. Puppets also inspired the illustration to the books by Jan Karafiat, which were expanded version of the puppet plays Among the Fireflies and Winter at the Fireflies. When he illustrated Caravan by Willhelm Hauff, he modeled his drawing on the puppets who had acted in Menzel's play, the Oriental Fairy tale, Mr. Eustachius, the Dog and the Sultan
Illustration, which Trnka regarded as a side-line, now had to take the place of his chief love, puppetry. His talent and personality were too strong for it to prove a blind alley. His art continued to develop and he had a powerful influence upon Czech children's books, and the whole technique of illustration.
He may, in fact, be said to have revolutionized it. Bruin Furryball in his Forest Home was the sensation of the Christmas book trade in 1939. Trnka was still experimenting. He used contrasting patches of colour instead of outlined drawings, and the effect of the pure colours, without graduations in tone, was simple but original. Basil the peasant had a red nose, a brown moustache and a brown beard. Bruin had a white front, goggle eyes, and a red dot for a tongue. Trnka's characteristic of rounding of the form of his characters, combined with touched of the grotesque, made the pictures distinctive and exactly in key with the atmosphere of the text. He held closely to the story, but succeeded also in conveying the spirit of it, as well as the events. Children responded at once to the poetry of his simple little drawings. 
In his hands the illustrations became, not an extra, but an organic part of a children's book. This was a novel approach which helped to increase the artistic value of children's books: a book began to be something which, by its very appearance, could appeal to a child's imagination. Trnka regarded his illustration as a starting-point of fantasy, rather than a means of direction the imagination. His pictures were intended to be the first link in a chain of associations. That is why he often did not depict any one action, or section of a story, but a whole array of events, in which dream bordered on reality, reality on fantasy.
Thus he gave a new meaning to the illustrator's work. The works of his early period varied in style and technique. He approached each book differently, as though he were testing the potentials of the methods of reproduction. He used large loosely applied patches of colour, simple black and white lines, light water colours, and intricate techniques in which drawings and gouache were combined.
In the fireflies books he used a technique sharply contrasted with that on Bruin the Bear. The insects are drawn with thin lines, and he creates a world of tiny creatures dressed in period clothes, their behavior in keeping with these. By tiny touches, such as the angle at which he sets the eyes, antennae and wings, he indicated the dream world, the world of insects.
The full-page illustrations are in bright coloured paint thinly applied. Trnka used a kind of spiral composition, building up his ideas from the top downwards. By linking certain shades of colour, and by the used of thin lines, he managed to convey the idea of weightlessness and irreality. The dream became real, and reality turned back into a dream.
This variety of techniques led only gradually to a unified style. Trnka was feeling his way towards it, and it took him some time to find it. But the basic concept never changed. Trnka did not illustrate scenes or situations. He mirrored the atmosphere, the dramatic or poetic meaning of the story.
The first book in which his individual approach as an illustrator took definite shape was Susan Discovers the World, by H. Chovokova. It was, in face, a little book written by his wife about their daughter Susan's first steps into the bigger world, and it was a powerful source of inspiration to Trnka. It had double-page illustrations in which he developed his notion of reality combined with dream in a way which was to become typical of all his work, not only as an illustrator. For the first time, he used a number of separate events to compose on illustration, placing them side by side for the sake of their association, at times superimposing or overlapping them, or linking them by an inner poetry, stressed outwardly through colour.
By painting the dreamlike aspects of reality Trnka was doing the same as the surrealists, but his illustrations have none of the cruelty or artistic ruthlessness of surrealism. His roaming brush reflected a child's roaming mind, with is inability to concentrate, its tendency to fantasy. He created a world where a lion leaps out of the sea on to the shore; where bears on ice floes admire floating roses; where the body of a drowned man sinks to the bottom through the seaweed; where a princess lights a stove, and a rider calms his prancing horse. The events seem unconnected, but everything is really subtly inter-related and full of magic, like and enchanting fairy-tale vision. Trnka had the first of endowing animals and things with mysterious and splendid inner life. His baby elephant suggest a toy for a small child; his water-lily a cradle. He draws a fish telling a fairy tale. His squirrel, hare and fawn are companions. Remote objects seem close, intimate, utter gentle.
Even where he did not use puppets as models, his figures were reminiscent of them. He never attempted to conceal that he was at heart a puppeteer. He drew attention to the relationship between his two medium of expression in his first exhibition.
This was held at the Arts and Crafts Museum in Prague, between November 29th and January 5th, 1941, under the title ‘The Children's Painter'. Trnka laid his complete work before the public, putting his puppets side by side with his illustrations. He showed no only the puppets from the Wooden Theatre, but also those private puppets which he had continued to make over the years, for no special purpose: the old decorative puppets of characters from Shakespeare, or inspired by the words of Maeterlink, Zeyer, or Mozart. And by their side were new ones, made in his spare time, as a realization from the tension of the work on book illustrations. Like the toys his mother had made, they were sometimes of rag. Trnka had an understanding of the quality of material, and he could use fabric to express character. He made rag figures of Indians, foresters, chimneysweeps, old men, musicians. They were all charming, in spite of their clumsiness. They were intended as children's toys, and were sewn by Trnka himself, though he had designed them with an eye to mass production. He had dreams of replacing the ordinary mass-produced dolls, which he though inartistic and unsuited to children's psychological needs. He put his rag dolls on exhibition to attract the attention of the public and also the toy makers.
‘The Children's Painter' exhibition was the event of the season. Its great attraction was the diorama The Insect Wedding, which excited the small visitors, and even won praise from the art critics, who were generally niggardly, since they did not take puppets and children's book illustration seriously. The response from the public and critics established Trnka in his position in the forefront as an illustrator.
One thing disappointed him, however. They toy-makers did not show the interest he had anticipated. There were some voices raised in the Press, drawing their attention to Trnka's dolls, but nothing came of it.
Trnka's second more carefully planned attempt to bring his puppets to life had failed.
I started reading a book about Jiri Trnka last night - published in 1963. It was written by Jariskav Bocek, and is difficult to find.
The act of typing as I read is not so difficult, so I'm going to post the first chapter, and maybe a few more, but I am concerned that people will see this as a copyright violation, rather than an attempt to share a hard to find document with fellow artists.
CHAPTER I
In a sense, it was density which led Trnka to puppet film. The story of his work, as with any artist, had begun long before he came on to the scene. He was the son of Rudolf Trnka, a plumber, and was born on February 24th, 1912, in a suburb of Plzen (Pilsen), in Bohemia. In his own home circle and outside it, work in puppetry had developed to a stage where it was to exert a decisive influence on a highly impressionable child.
Doll-making was a familiar occupation in the household, and he must have met his first puppet at a very early age. His grandmother was a dressmaker, and she made Jiri's first toys from bits of rag. It was not long before the small child was imitating them both and improving upon his own toys, or making new ones.
He was soon to see puppets in action: at the afternoon performance for children at the Holiday camp Theatre. This theatre had a fine tradition in puppetry, and presented a varied repertory, including opera and light opera, drama, variety shows and revues. It put on works by Offenbach, Mozart and Gluck, Pushkin and Moliere as well as the Czech classics.
The Holiday Camp Theatre was run by Josef Skupa, who took it over in 1916, when Trnka was four years old. Seven years later, when Jiri was 11, he went to the secondary school where Josef Skupa was working as a young art teacher. Skupa soon noticed the boy’s talent and interest in puppetry, and it was not long before Trnka found himself on the other side of the curtain at the Holiday Camp Theater. To Begin with Skupa allowed Trnka and the other boys to help with odd jobs. Later he gave them more important work. They helped to paint backcloths, repair broken puppets, even to make simple stage props. Trnka's years of apprenticeship as a puppeteer had begun.
The Holiday Theatre Camp introduced him to both the classic and contemporary work. When Josef Skupa took over in 1916 he began a satirical feature know as Kaspar's Cabaret. Kaspar, played and spoken by Skupa himself, gave a commentary on political life, in the form of jokes, criticism and ridicule. He attacked the monarchy, oppression and war. As early as September 2nd, 1918, over a month before the final even, he performed the burial rites of the Austro-Hungarian Empire on his stage.
Thus Trnka encountered both traditional and new influences. From the older traditions of folk puppeteers Trnka learned that the puppet was something other than a mere imitation of a living actor. It was a medium of artistic expression in its own right, with its own special technical and stylistic requirements.
From Josef Skupa Trnka learned that tradition should not be allowed to make an art-form static, and that many of the older traditions of puppetry were out of date, and needed developing and infusing with new life by means of different techniques, a different style of puppet drama, new poetry. He learned that art should go forward, and that there was great scope for originality.
But these influences were absorbed unconsciously. At the time, the boy was merely happy to be taking part in the work of grown-up people, and he was greatly thrilled when the first puppet he designed was used at the theatre by Josef Skupa.
Inevitably, Jiri was playing more attention to the little theater than to his school work, and in a sense puppetry was unlucky for him at this time. His school reports were not very good, and this influenced the family, who were at a time of crisis, in their decision to take Jiri and his younger bother away from school and set them to earning a living.
The family's circumstances had become serious. Then Jiri was in the fourth form at school his father's plumbing business went bankrupt. Rudolf Trnka had been unsettled by several years in the trenches during the First World War, and he had managed only by a great effort to keep his head above water. Now the family, who had already been living very modestly, were in dire need. Jiri was apprenticed to a pastry-cook. Geometry, arithmetic, art and technical drawing had to give way to pastry and cream cakes. But within two months Jiri had change his job. His white overalls were replaced with blue dungarees, and for a short while he learned the trade of locksmith in the Plsen Skoda Works. But then Josef Skupa intervened to find him more congenial work, in the arts and crafts shop.
Jiri had not, of course, given up the little theatre. It was inevitable that, at a time when his days were occupied by work that did not interest him, he should have turned more and more towards puppetry. He spent his evening in concentrated work for the theatre, painting backcloths, designing stage props, carving, and clothing the puppets themselves. Sporadically at first, his name began to appear on publicity material. As time passed, the last item on the programme would often read: Puppets: Gustav Nosek and Jiri Trnka.
The puppets Trnka made for Skupa's theatre were the usual characters of variety shows: there were puppets with elongated necks, grotesque groups of identical little figures, ballet dancers, and circus folk. But these were not the only puppets he was making at the time. He produced others for himself: as a hobby, and as a means of self-expression. These were not meant for the theatre: they were decorative little creatures, almost masks. Trnka ha no particular purpose in mind, but these puppets interpreted the impressions made on him by the books he has read and the characters in them: Don Quixote, Hamlet, Mercutio. He made them simply because he had the urge to do so.
Trnka's two years earning his own living were not wasted: they were years in the school of life, and they taught him that nothing was to be had without working for it. Talent, he realized, meant very little by itself, unless given its fullest expression through work, carried out with determination and will-power. Nevertheless, the two years confirmed him in his resolve to devote his life to art.
Josef Skupa, who had helped him so far, felt a great responsibility toward his gifted pupil, and was concerned for his future. He felt that the life Jiri was leading did not give him enough opportunity to develop his talent. Skupa was convinced that, in the filed of puppetry, a talented person could no loner make his was without a specialty training. He therefore tried to persuade Jiri's family to send him to the School of Applied Arts in Prague. The family hesitated because of the difficulties in providing for the boy, but Skupa put forward a concrete proposal, and then his arguments bore fruit.
In September, Jiri now sixteen years old, set out for Prague knowing that his needs would be provided for. He stayed at his brother's flat which did not involve the family in the extra expense of lodgings. His midday meal was provided free by the Bohemian Heart, a charity organization, which catered for poor students. But while he studied, he still had to earn money to provide for his other needs: his breakfast, supper, clothes and equipment for the school.
He was able to earn from two sources. One was Skupa's theatre, for which Trnka continued to work as a stage and puppet designer. The other was a children's newspaper called Night Time. The editor was one of Skupa's collaborators, and gave Jiri work as an illustrator.
The school of Applied Arts came first, of course. It was an art school fo the traditional type, where stress was placed heavily on craftsmanship and the complete mastery of technique. Trnka found hits especially so in Professor Benda's class in graphic design, which he attended. He became an outstanding student. A design he made in his third year, a carving illustrating Goethe's poem, The Dance of Death, was chosen to represent Czech graphic art at the Goethe Exhibition in Liepzip, in 1931.
