Hopping on the tram to Pentřiny to the designer’s home with a bouquet under one arm and her printed questions in another, Anežka was apprehensive, but was met with a warm welcome from Clara. “That was the beginning of many afternoons at her dining table”, she shares, “We talked about books, typography, love, history, and her beloved dachshunds. Over time we became friends, and those conversations slowly became the backbone of A Life Among Letters.”
What began as a student project and eventually became the flesh of a printed book, A Life Among Letters, published by Inventory Press, is an extended interview between Clara Anežka in which she explores the very personal influences that fed into Clara’s life’s work – a largely unrecognised revolutionary oeuvre that spanned some of the greatest political and societal upheavals of Czech history, all whilst leaving an unmistakable mark on an era of book design and 20th-century typography. “If you grew up in Czechoslovakia, you have probably held one of her designs without knowing her name”, Anežka tells us. “She worked across genres, children’s books, poetry, architecture, and exhibition catalogues, but always with the same conviction: a love of letters.”
Presenting all of these works together for the first time in this English language edition, the book takes readers almost through a hidden book shelf of her designs. “Since Clara never archived her own work, I had to become the archivist, tracking down her books in libraries, antiquarian shops, and private collections”, Anežka says, “In this way, the book became a meeting place: Clara’s voice in dialogue with collaborators, scholars and friends.”
Interspersed between these covers are intimate archival photographs and ephemera from the designers personal life, something that is often left out of a traditional monograph but that Anežka felt was an important tool to convey “the multitasking rhythm of women’s creativity”. In these moments Clara speaks to not only to her creative process, but also to “her lovers, family, motherhood, caregiving and daily life” – all the things that intersected with the work and existed in between it.