The beginnings of modern interest in folk trades and handicrafts and their improvement acquired different forms. One of them was the organization of various handicraft schools and courses, especially in Moravia, where the Moravian Central Office for Folk Industry (Moravská ústředna pro lidový průmysl) was founded in Brno. In Bohemia it was Artěl, founded in 1908, that followed in these activities, and later Jan Kotěra a Pavel Janák founded the Union of Czech Work (Svaz českého díla). The attitudes of the public and the producers after the foundation of Czechoslovakia was influenced not only by their esteem for tradition, but also by support for part of the authorities that gave preference to Czech decorativeness a an constituent of the peculiarity of the newly founded state. Already at that time it was evident that the esteem far tradition and the interest in traditional technologies is a syndrome of the industrial civilization. In this development not only the artictic but also social questions played their part. The gradual emancipation of women and their increased participation in production and social life brought about changes in family life. The expansion of tourism, sport activities, recreation in nature and other attributes of modern lifestyle was a new phenomenon related to the boost of the free time of the workers and officials. This also represented an impulse for the fabrication of items that differed from the industrial stereotype. Only the second half of the twentieth century, characterized by the rapid development of industrial production and the emergence of new technologies stimulated the documentation activities aimed to the preservation of records of the vanishing handicrafts and influenced the technological as well as the artistie aspects of their lingering existence. As a result of this endeavor the deeree of the president of the republic already on October 27, 1945 established the Headquarters of Folk Trades and Handicrafts (Ústředí lidových řemesel a lidové umělecké výroby -hereafter ÚLUV). Pieces of knowledge of natural resources and their qualities, of technological principles and artistic preconditions for their processing for the use of contemporary lifestyle moved artists, ethnographers and producers to work shoulder to shoulder in a unique way at production of new items that met with an extraordinary interest for part of the public. In the first twenty years of its existence, ÚLUV served as an example of modern management style with an ecological as well as a cultural function. However, in the whirl of the transformation processes ÚLUV was closed down and its documentation funds were handed over to the archives of ethnograp and hic museums in Prague and in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm. In accord with the UNESCO proclamation of the year 1989, entitled Recomendation to the preservation of traditional folk culture and folklore, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic authorized the National Institute for Folk Culture (Národní ústav lidové kultury) in Strážnice to commence the project of videodocumenttion of the dying-out handicraft technologies. In the year 2001 the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic joined the new UNESCO proclamation in aid of dying-out technologies of folk handicrafts through the establishment of the title „bearer of the tradition of folk handicrafts“, a joint acknowledgement of selected producers. This acknowledgement confirms the knowledge that tradition in the first place is a bearer of technological discipline and the rules of production.
The extraordinary advancement of the ethnological research in the twentieth century that aims to describe and explain the modalities of human existence brought also some important practical results. For example, ethnology has demonstrated the nonexistence of fundamental dijferences among the peoples of this planet and through this contributed especially to the struggle against racial theories. It also fomented a more profound study of the roots that give rise to basic consciousness of morals and of moral conduct in individual cultures. According to SigmundFreud, similarities exist in the psychic of allpeople, because we allpass through the universal experience of childhood and our life in adulthood is,for the main part, resultingfrom theprocesses oflearning and socialization in a concrete environment. The majority of things that man has to do doesn ’t stemm from the immediate experience and observation, but from the constant sifting and refming of the tradition that asks for individual acceptation and observation of moral principles which are impossible to justify through usual theories of racionalization. The Nobelprize holder, the Austrian economist Fr. A. Hayek, has stated that the selective process that had formed the cusíoms and morals, could háve responded to more factual realities then the individuals could possibly perceive, and owing to this, the tradition is “wiser ” then the human intellect. Moral attitudes and moral conduct don ’t emanate from the the books of ethics, but mainly from the traditions we were born to, and from the education that is based on these traditions. The principles of moral conduct, encoded in customs, songs, rhymes, stories and other expressions of family, national or ethnic traditions, háve a marked importance even in contemporary desacralized society, in čase we accept their historical conditionality. The current intense technical and economical processes, accompanied by the development of globál communication, influence the contacts of various cultural patterns and result in a difficult acculturation process. This could lead to the rise of a qualitatively new cultural systém, but at the same time these processes contains in themselves the inclination towards the defence of one ’s own systém and refusal of other influences, regardless of the fact that the conditions for the existence of isolated local cultures in reál cease to exist A human individual acquires his evaluative judgements through the processes of learning and experience to such extent that he comprehends the conduct that is incompatible with good morals as something impossibble. The contemporary ethnological research confirms that this is the essence o and f the ethical consciousness and conduct, albeit modified in different cultures, and that the precondition of peaceful development of the modem multicultural society is the comprehension of the sources of moral principles of the past generations.