Artia (publisher)
Artia was a Cold War-era government-run company in Prague, Czechoslovakia, that is best known today for publishing books and fairy tales for children.[1]
| Country of origin | Czechoslovakia |
|---|---|
| Headquarters location | Prague |
| Publication types | Children's books |
In the fifteen years to 1967, Artia published 3,000 titles and books on "art, general books, [popular] science literature and children's books" were exported to "26 countries in 17 languages".[2]
In addition to its book publishing activities, Artia was involved in the export of "periodicals, music, records, gramophones, works of art, postage stamps, coins, teaching aids, antiquities, Bohemian garnets, cartographic products, silver costume jewellery, folk art, and ... musical instruments".[2]
The British publisher Paul Hamlyn was granted exclusive rights to sell Artia's English-language publications in the United Kingdom. Czechoslovak printers and publishers in the 1950s and 1960s had a reputation for fine gravure colour printing using four-colour offset machinery. In 1960 Hamlyn published Cookery in Colour designed in-house by his firm and printed by Artia in Czechoslovakia. The first printing sold 50,000 copies and was reprinted "several times annually for many years".[3]
Select bibliography of books published by Artia
- Moskau, Jan Lukas, 1962.[4]
- Prager Alltag, Erich Einhorn and Jan Zelenka, 1958.[5]
- Prehistoric Animals, Josef Augusta, illustrated by Zdenek Burian, ca. 1960.
References
- Märchen der Welt (Artia) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 25 December 2018.
- "What is Artia?" (advertisement), The Guardian, 12 September 1967, p. 8.
- Philip Jarvis and Sue Thomson, "Paul Hamlyn: The Must Be A Better Way...", in: Richard Abel and Gordon Graham, eds., Immigrant Publishers: The Impact of Expatriate Publishers in Britain and America in the 20th Century, Routledge, 2017 (ebook edition).
- Jan Lukas - Moskau, josefchladek.com. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
- Erich Einhorn & Jan Zelenka - Prager Alltag, josefchladek.com. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
Further reading
- Mirjam Bohatcová, The Czech Book and the World, Prague, Artia, 1972. "Dedicated to the 20th anniversary of Artia publishers."