Jednota

The gear-and-flower federation, from Nymburk purple to Bruntál blue. Bottom right, the file's single Slovak exhibit: Liptovský Mikuláš, promising tasty meals and accommodation in your factory. Czechoslovakia in one caption.

A queen from a folk woodcut asks you to visit again; a sun serves winter and summer alike; the Bohemian Paradise gets a blue panorama. The co-op's artists were the last folk illustrators on the payroll.

The prize exhibits. The state airline on a beer mat — OK Jet, bow-tied barman. A black cat dealing billiards for the state arcade monopoly. And the masterpiece: ŽENY — ŠETŘTE ČAS, 'Women — save time, buy semi-finished food products.' Feminism, as filtered through a canteen directorate. Below: mail-order, a construction trust recruiting roofers, and building materials — advertised where the roofers actually were.

The West Bohemian Meat Industry printed a map of its sausage works; Pramen groceries turned twenty with a watering can and a wine-glass heart; the Machinist restaurant in Přerov set its table on a blueprint grid. Heavy industry, light lunch.

HAlimo lemonade — prima! — and a stern reminder that non-alcoholic drinks maintain health, printed, with a straight face, on a beer mat. The last two exhibits arrived un-cut, still on their scanning cards: communal catering as 'the correct decision', and the Jednota waiter, towel over arm, forever mid-bow.

Addendum: a co-op map of Central Bohemia; a mat advertising 'favourable working and wage conditions' — a beer mat, recruiting you to a job, over the beer the job would pay for; and the toast monkey. ŽIVIÓ — long life. The file's editorial position, at last.