Artia (publisher)


Artia was a Cold War-era government-run company in Prague, Czechoslovakia, that is best known today for publishing books and fairy tales for children.
In the fifteen years to 1967, Artia published 3,000 titles and books on "art, general books, science literature and children's books" were exported to "26 countries in 17 languages".
In addition to its book publishing activities, Artia was involved in the export of "periodicals, music, records, gramophones, works of art, postage stamps, coins, teaching aids, antiquities, Bohemian garnets, cartographic products, silver costume jewellery, folk art, and... musical instruments".
The British publisher Paul Hamlyn was granted exclusive rights to sell Artia's English-language publications in the United Kingdom. Czechoslovak printers and publishers in the 1950s and 1960s had a reputation for fine gravure colour printing using four-colour offset machinery. In 1960 Hamlyn published Cookery in Colour designed in-house by his firm and printed by Artia in Czechoslovakia. The first printing sold 50,000 copies and was reprinted "several times annually for many years".

Select bibliography of books published by Artia