Beautiful pop-up books and innovative paper engineering by Czech artist Vojtěch Kubašta
When the communist government nationalised the entire publishing industry in 1948, Kubašta had to search for new venues to market his artistic talent. He was involved in designing advertising materials for Czechoslovak products abroad. He created three-dimensional cards that advertised porcelain, sewing machines, pencils, Pilsner beer, sunglasses, and other products. Every Christmas season, he designed and illustrated a new crèche in which he captured the Czech traditional Christmas setting. In 1956, he designed his first fairy tale pop-up book: Little Red Riding Hood. Kubašta offered this pop-up book to the Prague-based ARTIA publishing house for publication. ARTIA was a state-owned foreign trade corporation.
During the years that followed, Vojtěch Kubašta's three-dimensional books made him the publishing house's best-known book designer and illustrator. His pop-up books have been published in 24 different languages and 35 million copies have been sold. Today, original editions of his illustrations and books are sought after by collectors from around the world.