My email replies agreeing to an offer by Petr Elias from Albatros publishing house to illustrate a Czech classic by Jaroslav Foglar were landing in a spam folder for a while but thankfully the collaboration did happen in the end

I appreciated the creative freedom which I was given, plus a number of photo-references from Roman Šantora – because I decided to use original Foglar’s Prague club “Dvojka” as the main reference for the club “Devadesátka” in the book. Collecting other references for the period objects (posters, shoes, documents) was a big part of my preparation for illustrating this book. For help with finding posters from specific years I’m grateful to Tereza Janoušková from The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague. Photos from the online catalogue of Prague City Archives were very useful too.

The book was published in the Albatros’ edition of newly illustrated Foglar’s books before christmas 2021.