Jirka Mrázek – trading in Communist-era design items with firm Nanovo
The company Nanovo trades in classic design items from Czechoslovakia’s Communist era. With a name that translates as ‘again’ or ‘afresh’, Nanovo sells everything from kitschy chandeliers to simple plastic phones to old-fashioned armchairs. Jirka Mrázek is one of two Praguers in their late 20s behind the firm, which since last summer has been operating out of a small warehouse in Vysočany, an old industrial part of the city. There, surrounded by a treasure trove of stuff, I asked Mrázek where he and his partner had got the idea for their business.
We’re surrounded by incredible, I guess, 1960s and ‘70s lamps and so on here at your warehouse. How do you find these things?
“At the beginning, more or less on the internet. But now we go all around the Czech Republic and search in secondhand stores and old bazaars and places like that.”
Is it as easy today to find this stuff as it was a few years ago?
“I think it’s almost the same. But we have seen that prices on the internet are going up a little bit. So it’s not the best place for us to buy. But I think that people still have tonnes of that stuff at home. They just don’t sell it.”
I mentioned the lamps. What other kinds of items do you sell?
“As you can see, now we have the space, so we can store bigger pieces. Now we are more into sitting furniture – armchairs, small tables and so on.”
A lot of these things remind me of flats that I visited, or even stayed in, in the early 1990s; a lot of the items are very similar, if not the same, especially the lamps. Do they remind you of your own childhood, or, I don’t know, your grandparents’ houses?
“Maybe it’s good for me and good for our business that I don’t see that it’s like my grandparents’ flat here.”
What do you think is the magic of this Czechoslovak Communist-era design? Or at least, what’s the appeal? Why are people buying it today?
“Probably they like the shapes. And from my point of view, the first thing they like is that it’s not made only for two years, but it has already lasted for 40 years so it will last for another 20, at least.
“It just needs some small repairs and it works. So the shapes are good, it looks good and it’s from good materials.”
Do some of your customers equip their whole flat with some of your goods?
“Not usually. But we had one customer and it was funny because he’d just bought a flat which was in a 1950s apartment building and he equipped it just with stuff from the 1950s.
“It was stuff we didn’t like. He just came to our storehouse last year and he took things we’d thought we’d never sell. But he liked it. It was funny – the whole flat.”
“From my point of view, the exhibition you’re talking about wasn’t the best. Because they made a place with stuff that people don’t usually like. They were basic things, and not the best from that era.
“What was better was the exhibition Brussels Dream, which came before it…And what was the question [laughs]?”
Is there much interest in that era – or in that design?
“Yes. Interest follows the exhibitions – if there’s a book published, if there’s an exhibition, it just opens people’s eyes.”
Was it a big learning curve for you to find out about this stuff, and the history of the design of that era?
“We’re still in the process and I think we still will be in 40 years’ time. We find a chair and we look for the designer who made it, or the place where it was made.”
“Probably the old Czech Vertex chair, which was inspired by the famous Eames chair. That’s probably what people like most, even abroad – we sell many to Germany.”
Do you export a lot?
“It depends. Sometimes if there is an article on some cool website for hipster young people, you can instantly see tens of offers from abroad. Our sales are, let’s say, 80 percent Czech and 20 percent we sell abroad.”
In New York I went to a place that looked a bit like this but was much more upmarket called Prague Kolektiv, which I’m sure you know about. They sell old Czech design stuff, but they also have replicas made and sell them. Is that something you do, or are considering doing?
“No. We don’t want to do it. Even in the future, I think there are still so many original pieces that there is no need to make replicas. And we don’t like them, either.”
What about the condition of the items that you sell? Will you sell something which is scratched or imperfect?
“Scratches aren’t bad…Of course, we don’t sell things that are broken. The concept of our store is to sell stuff that people can instantly use when they bring it home. But we’re OK with the patina and some scratches – it’s just how it was.”
“Yes, it’s a three-month cooperation that happened after I met a guy who was working on a design festival in Leipzig…It’s nice. It’s slowly, slowly beginning.”
Could you possibly compare Czech design from that era to East German design?
“It’s quite different…The stuff we had in Czechoslovakia they didn’t have in East Germany.”
What kind of things are you talking about?
“Everything. We had plastic chairs, they had plastic chairs, but they were differently shaped and the design was different. When we were there last time we brought back a famous ‘Z’ chair; there it’s like the Veltrex chair in the Czech Republic, and here it’s looked on as a design icon.”
Is there any design item that you are particularly keen to buy, that would be the ultimate find for you if you found it in a secondhand shop?
“Yes, there are many [laughs]. But I don’t know what in particular. Now we are searching…we had quite a huge collection of metal table lamps and we sold almost the whole collection to one Berlin gallery owner a year ago, so now we are building the collection again.
We’re surrounded by treasures, Jirka. Have you got a particular favourite item here at your warehouse?
“I like metal furniture, so for me that kind of industrial stuff. We have a metal register just behind me which is huge and will last for another 200 years. So for me metal lamps from factories and furniture like that, that’s my favourite stuff.”
