FFA publishing house has released Pavel Ryška's book Czech Consumer Fairy Tales

The book serves as a guide through the century-long history of both folk and artificial fairy tales in the service of the consumer industry. Its author, Pavel Ryška, who works in the Department of Audiovisual Technology at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Brno University of Technology (FFA), presented it in December 2024 at the Prague book fair Knihex 14½.

Pavel Ryška, who also engages in creating digital images and animations, reflects in České spotřební pohádky (Czech Consumer Fairy Tales) on a time when the advertising and consumer industries were not yet dominated by electronic technologies.

“Picture cards, leaflets, and small booklets were issued by private companies in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and by state enterprises in socialist Czechoslovakia. These colorful prints fascinated children, even though they offered only condensed versions of classic tales or naïve texts tailored to specific products, which directly replaced traditional magical objects in the stories. Advertising and promotional fairy tales, illustrated by popular artists as well as untrained anonymous illustrators, are a significant cultural phenomenon of the twentieth century. They influenced the imagination of multiple generations, helped sell industrial products, but were not only meant for merchants. They also aimed to educate: teaching children about hygiene principles, rational nutrition, the advantages of insurance, the importance of saving, and even recycling materials. They disappeared from public spaces only after the fall of the communist dictatorship, swept away by the advent of electronic technologies and new trends in the entertainment and advertising industries associated with them,” reads the text on the book’s cover.

The publication is available in the regular distribution network. For FaVU students, the book is available at a discounted price of 400 CZK in the FaVU library.


Pavel Ryška presented the book as part of the accompanying program of the Knihex 14½ book fair (in Czech language)
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Source: Faculty of Fine Arts at Brno University of Technology

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Author	Mgr. Petr Kubíček
Published	2025-01-24 15:22
Link	https://www.vut.cz/en/but/f19528/d278686