Shop with classic Czech designs opens in building with history

Photo: Ian Willoughby, Radio Prague International

Bohéma is the name of a new Prague shop selling T-shirts and other items featuring classic Czech images, from Sokol gymnasts to writer Karel Čapek. The company, previously online only, has opened the outlet in a building associated with major figures in the Czech National Revival. At its opening I spoke to Oldřich Neuberger, who founded Bohéma with his wife Eliška.

“Actually we are a non-profit, so we are doing it thinking that Czechs should be proud of their nation.

“Also there was a big celebration of 100 years of Czechoslovakia and we just wanted to get dressed with our kids and just celebrate, but we simply found out that it was very hard, that there were not that many things that we could wear that weren’t just cheap or, let’s say, stupid merchandise.

“So that’s how we created Bohéma.”

Your motto is “Discover Czech heritage” and you draw on many classic Czechoslovak images; you have for example Masaryk, Havel, the Šumperák house. How do you select the things that you feature on your T-shirts and so on?

“At the beginning it was very easy.

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Author: Ian Willoughby