Karol Guleja’s heritage
Dušan Mikolaj
At the end of the 1930s, Karol Guleja came to the village of Dlhé Pole as a young teacher. At that time Dlhé Pole was one of the most significant areas in former Drotária – a region with more than fifty villages across the Podjavorina and Kysuce sub-regions, a cradle of wire craft masters. It did not take too long to Karol Guleja to grasp the significance and meaning of wire craft. He met, and talked with, a number of legendary craftsmen involved in wire craft, finding, in their houses, masterpieces made of wire, testimonies to these masters’ life and work outside our lands, their distinct clothing, as well as things brought from abroad, including foreign banknotes. These all document successes and skills of the craftsmen who made use of their knowledge and skills far beyond Slovakia’s borders. Helped by other enthusiasts, he gathered a great number of artefacts and so, on 5th July 1940, it was possible, on the premises of newly opened school in Dlhé Pole, to launch an exhibition devoted to wire art and relevant ethnographic resources. Exactly two years after that, these artefacts became the basis for the Wire Art Museum and form, up to the present day, an integral part of today’s collections of the Považie Museum.
Further articles in the magazine Craft, Art, Design 02/2017:
- Outstanding Slovak phenomenon
- Karol Guleja’s heritage
- Wire craft in the Museum of Folk Art Production
- Dreaming of Drotária map
- Seventy eventful years
- Jozef Zoller: Dodko Drôtik (Little Wire) becoming master
- Milan Kočtúch: shepherd in heart
- Heritage of the Jurovatý family
- Research into wire craft in Slovakia
- From thread to wire
- Tradition or design?
- Keeping craft alive
- There is a dress, and then there is a dress...
- Art making intertwined with life
- How can be drawings embodied in space
- Thin Black Lines
- Works of art as pleasing as Belgium chocolate