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About Tititi

Tititi – Toys and Objects

Mgr. Marie Míčová, curator of Toy Collection The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague

Tititi is a brand founded by Tereza Talichová in 2019 that has successfully found its niche in contemporary Czech design for children. Tititi focuses on one-of-a-kind hand-painted wooden figures uniquely personifying many different types of people, artists and drama and book characters, which are rendered in a playful way and with a penchant for detail.  First, the wood (spruce, oak, limewood) is hand-turned to give shape to the figure and then painted. With a few exceptions, the forms are symmetrical, vertical and individualized, executed according to a profile (silhouette) outline. The small objects  are based on the artist’s original artwork, mainly figurative drawings, and watercolour and oil paintings. In terms of type, these works fall within the category of applied arts although the use of the objects is solely up to the decision of their owner – children can play with them, adults can use them as interior accessories. Although Tereza Talichová’s artwork is primarily not created as playthings, they can become toys.

Tereza Talichová draws inspiration from the milieu she is familiar with. As a city person with a cultural background, she is especially intrigued by the fine arts and music. Her interest centres on people – notably highly creative individuals – and their characteristic traits, behaviour or appearance that are generally known; the viewer will therefore easily recognize and identify them. The designer’s approach is in part an innocent yet observant child-like view, she often regards her characters with humour as well as admiration and a strong personal relationship to what the figures represent. 

Tereza Talichová seeks inspiration in the work of Minka Podhajská (1881–1963) and the Artěl art cooperation’s designers who, in the early 20th century, stood at the inception of the reformation movement for innovative toys that introduced artistic stimuli into the toy-making craft. She makes her figures using the traditional techniques of wood-turning and hand-painting, while developing her basic theme in her individual series: her collaboration with other artists, illustrators and graphic designers (Jiří Franta, Ilona Polanski of the Tomski and Polanski duo, Filip Pošivač, Patrik Antczak, Michaela Mihalyi, Barbora Idesová). She has created a series of movable objects (Kinetic Cosmos), hanging swing toys (Monkey Swing) and finger puppets (Commedia dell’arte), and makes designs for art prints in which her figures are set in abstract compositions. Besides Czech sources, she also turns for inspiration to puppets created in the Bauhaus circle of artists, the Dada wooden sculptures of Sophie Taeuber-Arp and those of Giacomo Balla from the 1920s, and to the small colourful objects designed by Alexander Girard in the 1950s.