Jindřich Waldes

Jindřich Waldes 2 July 1876 Nemyšl u Tábora – May 1941 Havana (precise date of death is not known), leading industrialist, founder of Waldes Koh-i-noor Company, Czech patriot and art collector.

Life

Karel Waldes, father of Jindřich, had an inn and a small haberdashery shop in the village of Nemyšl near the town of Tábor in southern Bohemia. He wanted his son to continue his business but Jindřich found a position of a clerk at the firm of Eduard Lokesch and Son in Prague. This company made buttons and cufflinks. As Waldes had a good knowledge of languages he became Lokesch’s business agent and travelled the world on behalf of the firm.In 1902 together with an engineer Hynek Puc (1856-1938) Waldes left Lokesch and founded his own company Waldes a spol. A year later Puc invented a special machine that inserted a small spring into concealed dress fasteners, the main product of the new firm. The new machine supplemented labour of ten skilled workers. With the increased production Puc kept inventing more machines to support the manufacture of pins, safety pins, needles and buttons. The world renown Waldes trademark, Miss KIN, came about in 1912 when Waldes on his ocean trip to New York met Elisabeth Coyens who playfully put one fastener in her eye. František Kupka painted her portrait in oils and Vojtěch Preissig from it designed the firm’s trademark. The other trade names used were Koh-i-noor and Otello.

Waldes Koh-i-noor headquarters were located in Prague suburbs of Vršovice. Soon the company grew to a large concern with branch factories in Warsaw, Dresden, Vienna, Paris, Barcelona and New York.

In 1939 Waldes was imprisoned by Gestapo after the Third Reich occupation of Czechoslovakia and kept in concentration camps Dachau and Buchenwald. In 1941 his family, who were sent to USA by Waldes before the war (he decided to remain in Prague as a Czech patriot) paid the Nazi authorities 8 million Czech crowns ransom. However, Waldes did not survive the journey to the USA and died under suspicious circumstances on the ship which stopped at Havana, Cuba in May 1941.

Waldes was also a passionate art collector of contemporary Czech art. In 1918 in Prague he founded Waldes Museum for his collection of buttons which had over 70 thousand items. The collection was transferred after the Second World War to Uměleckoprůmyslové museum in Prague. Apart from buttons he collected works of Czech painters especially František Kupka’s paintings. They became friends in 1919 and remained so until 1938. Waldes supported Kupka throughout his career by buying his canvases. Part of Jindřich Waldes’ collection held by the National Gallery in Prague had been returned to his descendants living in the United States.

ee also

* František Kupka

Literature

* Patrik Šimon: Jindřich Waldes – sběratel umění, Patrik Šimon – Eminent, Praha 2001
* Jiří Waldes a kolektiv: Kupka – Waldes Malíř a jeho sběratel, Petr Meissner, Praha 1999

External links

[http://www.museumkampa.cz/new/cz/index.php Museum Kampa, Prague: permanent exhibition of František Kupka's paintings]