Audi 2009 Annual Report Download - page 121

marionettes to the tourists during intermissions. “I found
that most of the puppets were assembled carelessly, and
many of the parts were machine-made,” he recalls. This
aroused his ambition: There should be a better way than
that! He had always been good at handicrafts, so he de-
cided to change jobs: The salesman turned into the artist,
the employee became the boss of his own business. “In the
early years I’d sit in my workshop in the evenings, and dur-
ing the day I’d occupy my customary spot on the Old Town
Square in front of the Astronomical Clock where tourists
always pass by,” he says with a little smile. “I’d strap on a
vendor’s tray, and that’s how I sold my marionettes.” At
some point in time he leased his first store near the
Charles Bridge, and a few years later he opened a second
store. Today he carries several dozen different puppets in
his regular product line. The top sellers are Kaspar and the
Witch, but Truhlárˇ even makes a scuba diver, complete with
the oxygen bottle on his back. Each figure is unique: If you
take a closer look, you’ll notice that one Kaspar is sticking
out his tongue while another gives you a mischievous wink.
Pavel Truhlárˇ faces a real challenge when he receives spe-
cial orders from marionette theaters around the world.
They request characters such as Pinocchios, dragon-riding
devils and Don Quixote on his horse. “Creating such a pup-
pet takes weeks,” Truhlárˇ explains. But these artistic mari-
onettes are a challenge for the players as well: In the case
of Don Quixote, for instance, every limb of both horse and
rider and even the horse’s ears have to be separately move-
able, requiring the player to manually control a multitude
of strings simultaneously. “Being able to do that takes
hours of practice in front of a mirror,” says Truhlárˇ. He him-
self succumbed to the charm of the marionettes long ago,
even in his spare time: After work he joins some friends to
perform his own plays with his marionettes. Pavel Truhlárˇ
just returned from a world tour with his little theater, and
even performed in China.
The scale on which Dr. Michael Huber works is a good deal
larger than Truhlárˇ’s puppets: His masterpiece spans exact-
ly 3,312 meters and is the subject of breathless admiration
among experts in his field. Huber, who himself has a doc-
MASTER OF THE STONES
Hard manual labor: Each of the Beola stones
Roberto Bionda cuts into tiles and uses to cover roofs
in Piedmont, Italy, weighs 50 kilograms.
These stones survive wind and weather for generations.
KING OF THE STREIF
His handicraft makes records possible: Michael Huber
converts the “Streif” in Kitzbühel into one of the ski world’s
most spectacular downhill venues. For the legendary
World Cup race in January, it must be hard and highly resistant.
“
This work has remained exactly the
same as it was 1,000 years ago. There is
almost nobody left today who is skilled
in our forefathers’ old technique.”
Roberto Bionda, tiler and expert on Beola stone
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