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an author’s picture book set on the Czech railways
ČD tea is an author’s picture book inspired by the book Co vyprávěl kalumet (What the Calumet Told) by Vladimír Hulpach. The whole book is built on two worlds bleeding into one another — the fairy-tale world and our own everyday one.
The story follows the journey of a ten-year-old boy who borrows a book of Native American tales, Co vyprávěl kalumet, at the station in Česká Třebová. He starts reading it on the train, and motifs from the story gradually begin to spill over into reality, right into the carriage around him. Fairy-tale beings and situations start appearing among the ordinary passengers, making for moments that are both absurd and funny. The reader gradually discovers how closely the two worlds are connected, and the boundary between the magical world and “ours” slowly dissolves.
On the journey the main character manages to read only a single tale, called Kdo přinesl slunce (Who Brought the Sun). I photographed the original edition of Vladimír Hulpach’s book with illustrations by Miroslav Troup and set it directly into the hands of the main character’s puppet. It is the only continuous text that appears anywhere in the book. Apart from the title and the imprint, the story is told through images alone.
The key moments are created as detailed collages assembled from hand-made puppets, a cardboard model of the train and drawn elements. The individual scenes are linked by line drawing, which leads the reader through the story. The book also contains blank pages made from photographs of the real railway environment. By interweaving photography, illustration and physical objects, I show how imagination can quietly seep into reality and transform an ordinary train journey.
To make the illustrations I built a cardboard model of a Regionova railcar, based on the real train. First I photographed the interior and exterior of the train, and the photographs then served as reference both when building the model and when composing the individual scenes.
The model is made entirely by hand from paper, cardboard and polystyrene. The windows are clear film, the seats are upholstered in fabric and I sewed the little curtains from textile. I then painted the whole model with acrylics and added details such as pictograms and information signage matching the real fittings of the train.
Into the model I then placed my own puppets, with wire armatures and movable limbs, and built the individual scenes out of them specifically for photographing. I then combined the resulting photographs with drawing and made the final collages from them.
My own pet snail appears in the book too. You will find it in one of the collage illustrations and on the dust jacket.
The finished book is 24.5 × 33 cm and 92 pages in all. It contains 19 double-page collages, 21 double pages of line or shaded drawing and 7 double pages of photographs from the railway. The cover is black binding paper printed by serigraphy. It shows a boy on a balance bike, who also appears several times inside the book. The dust jacket is a photograph of four puppets and the snail arranged on the control desk of the driver’s cab.
My aim was to achieve a unified, mysterious space that shifts according to the means of expression used. I did not want to make individual images only, but to build a whole world, from making the puppets and the model of the train through to the photographic scenes, which work almost like small theatre sets.
I made the book for children and adults who love the world of fairy tales. The ones the magic has not yet drained out of, and who are not afraid to travel with the characters to absurd places. I would like the reader, leafing through the book, to find themselves on a small island of life full of adventurous journeys and friendly slugs and grasshoppers.
A series of six A2 serigraphs also came out of the thesis, translating the line drawings from the book into larger, standalone prints.
