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Current AffairsPainter Josef Capek's "Foot Bath" sets new Czech auction record
2006 has been an unusually successful year for Czech art auction houses.
With the number of collectors growing and ever more valuable pieces on
sale, turnover is soaring. This weekend, another record was broken. A
Cubist painting by the renowned twentieth century artist Josef Capek was
auctioned off for 9.3 million Czech crowns, which is over 430,000 US
dollars. Dita Asiedu reports:
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Current AffairsSpring season for Czech auction houses starts off with a bang
The Czech Republic's art and antique auction houses certainly have a season
to look forward to if this year's opening auction at the Dorotheum auction
house in Prague is anything to go by. Three records were broken on
Saturday. Items valued at 14 million crowns (a little over half a million
US dollars) were sold for 22 million (around 900,000 US dollars), the best
turnover that the country's established houses have ever witnessed.
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Current AffairsThe 'Chronicle of Dalimil': Sold to the Czech Republic for nine million crowns
In a whirl of smoke and mirrors, the Czech Republic acquired its most
valuable manuscript for generations on Thursday. A mystery bidder, who
turned out to be working for the Czech National Library, paid nine million
crowns (around four hundred thousand US dollars) to buy a unique medieval
manuscript - the Chronicle of Dalimil - that relates the history of
Bohemia. Rosie Johnston has been following the story, and asked Czech
Radio's Jan Krelina in Paris about the sale
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Current Affairs13th International Antique Trade Fair comes to a close in Prague
A little under sixty exhibitors spent the weekend at Prague's Manes
exhibition hall to offer their antiques at the 13th Antique Trade Fair,
which opened to the public on Thursday and closed on Monday, organised by
the Czech Association of Antique Dealers. A committee evaluated the goods
at the start of the fair and concluded that this year's quality was very
high. With around 1,000 visitors a day, there was also very large public
interest. The goods on show range from paintings, to furniture, to
jewellery, glass and porcelain, mostly of Czech or Central European
origin. Dita Asiedu spoke to Petra Young, Vice-President of the
Association of Antique Dealers, and started off by asking her whether the
Czech market for antiques was still relatively new:
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WitnessRudolf Linhart - Czech memories of the Titanic
The memory in this week's witness comes from deep in Radio Prague's
archives. Rudolf Linhart was a young Czech waiter, who had been working in
a London hotel in the years before the First World War. At the beginning
of 1912 his dream came true and he was taken on by the White Star Line to
work as a ship's waiter. He felt honoured when he was chosen to join the
crew for the maiden voyage of the greatest ship on earth, the Titanic. The
rest is history. In an interview fifty years later Rudolf Linhart
remembered the fateful night from the 14th to the 15th of April 1912.
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Current AffairsIceberg that sank the Titanic on photo taken by Czech seaman
It isn't often that a 90-year-old photograph causes a sensation, especially when all it seems to depict is a large block of ice. But that is just what has happened in the last few days here in the Czech Republic. All the Czech newspapers carried a photo showing an iceberg, said to be that which sank the Titanic and 90 years ago left nearly 1,600 people dead. The photo is thought to be the only surviving picture of the iceberg and was taken by a Czech sailor. In fact, it came to light two years ago, when German journalist Henning Pfeifer, a Titanic buff himself, bought it from a Czech collector, but only now has its full significance been realised. The photograph is to be shown publicly for the first time this month at a major exhibition on the Titanic, organized by the Maritime Volunteer Service in Dundee, Scotland. Earlier we spoke with David Kett, one of the curators of the exhibition:
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