Transformations Of Woodcraft Over Time

The idea to create a photography book that would chronicle the history and activity of the woodcraft movement emerged four years ago. One fall evening I was sitting at the Kupka family house in Měchenice, Czech Republic, drinking delicious Ceylon tea with Logan and Wenona, browsing through my growing archive of woodcrafter photos on a laptop. My aging Grand Chief was delighted by the tens of thousands of gorgeous scenes capturing our early predecessors' activities: „This would make a great material to help our young generation understand what woodcraft is!“

I cannot conceal the fact that the amazing book Skautské století ("A century of scouting") by my scout friend Roman Šantora – Bob was one of the sources of inspiration when putting this monography together. The outcome is markedly more modest which, of course, is because the woodcraft movement has never reached such a boom as scouting has. We also intentionally omitted extensive educational passages which would, in our opinion, make the contents less accessible to a wider audience. Nevertheless, we sought to check all facts scrupulously and list all sources.

Besides photos from the Bohemian and Moravian environment, the book also contains foreign photos. Slovak woodcrafting was automatically included in the publication as it had been part of the Czechoslovak movement for almost seventy years. Among other countries, we preferred those with which our woodcrafters actively kept or have kept in touch.

Apart from photos, the monography also contains other illustrative materials – scanned pictures, covers of magazines and chronicles, emblems of tribes and organizations, documents, correspondence, badges, diplomas, decrees, etc.

The materials for the book were provided in particular by the LLM (Woodcraft Movement) Archive under construction, but also by other archives, museums and private collectors. The full list is available at the end of this publication.

The book is intended especially for the youngest generation of woodcrafters and for the public, but we believe that it will also be a nice memento for our most experienced brothers and sisters.

We must also give our thanks to our predecessors who had documented the history of woodcraft for decades in their articles and samizdat (dissident, underground) publications. Namely: Karel Bukovanský – Buk, Alan Bura, Jan Kamenický – Had, Vladimír Kysilka – Los, Jan Niebauer – Wo, Jiří Novák – Hukwim, Jiří Pacl – Migisi, Rudolf Pach – Rolf, Viktor Palivec – Světlá stopa, Zdeněk Teichman – Atahualpa, Milouš Stárek – Mahykan, Miloslav Vavrda – Minehaha, Ladislav Vodák – Letící Sokol, and Jaromír Wolf – Vlk.