Tools

Tools are one of the core areas of the industrial design collections, numbering more than 160 objects. The most valuable part of the collection are designers’ models and prototypes of hand tools and other instruments from the 1940s through the 1970s, which represent a fundamental chapter in the history of Czech, as well as European, industrial design. The oldest of them is the handle of a pair of vibrating scissors, ergonomically shaped by the sculptor Vincenzo Makovský for the footwear industry in 1940. So far, the most extensive set is represented by designs for light industry by Makovský's student Zdeněk Kovář. A comparison of the approach to the shape and ergonomic solution of tools and instruments is provided by the works of the graduates of the Secondary School of Applied Arts in Uherské Hradiště based on the detached studio of Machine Design in Zlín (formerly Gottwaldov) from the 1950s to the 1980s (Gustav Hlávka, Miroslav Klíma, Alexius Appl and others) and the work of the Prague industrial designers (Stanislav Lachman, Jan Tatoušek and Ivan Moucha and others).