Rustika Gallery

In 1998 Janko Mlakar opened a shop RUSTIKA - Arts and craft gallery at Ljubljana Castle. As well as his own products, the shop stocks a range of products by Slovene craftsmen that have been approved by the Commission for the Evaluation of Handicrafts Products at the Chamber of Small Business. Stickers or tags certifying their quality identify all that products. The shop- gallery is still the only one in Slovenia that will only have elected products bearing the Slovene Quality Handicrafts symbol. Handicraft products in Rustika are carefully chosen and represent a bond with the past because they enable every individual a specific quality of modern living and live in general.

As in the case a number of other countries, contemporary artisanship in Slovenia is evolving in two different creative directions: first there is the repetition of historical memory, or what we call "replicas". The second group is upgrading of this memory in the various trends of contemporary creativity in terms of technology, expression and content. The combination of these two basic directions is encompassed in the images and rich variety of the artisanal creativity of a great number of individuals. Some of their products are on sale at the Rustika gallery at Ljubljana Castle. Janko and Zdena Mlakar from Ljubljana, who are two exemplary representatives of Slovene artisans in the production of replicas from our heritage, which they offer in their gallery to customers alongside the products of top contemporary Slovene artisans, manage the shop. Here we cannot peak only of trading, but also of communicating by means of special products with a regional and local colouring, which are the best possible identity document of Slovenia and its creativity.

Despite the relatively modest care that has been afforded by Slovene society to this fundamental area of nation's creativity throughout the period since the Second World War, a vast range of activities, skill, knowledge has been preserved and many artisans remain. They are excellent conveyors of these cultural values to the new millennium, passing them onto the new generation. I am happy to be able to say that he age of communicators of this activity is falling, which is delightful news. More and more young people are trying to discover and realise their creative potential through contact with historical memory or the artisenal forefather, and some times also with the heritage of arisan creativity is not a form of the past but that is chiefly a recognised model of the present with a historical dimensions. For the individual generations, heritage is merely a junction or perhaps a link between the past and the future. Furthermore, to contemporary man the masterpieces of artisenal heritage and contemporary creativity do not mean merely a material testimony to or arguments for identity and continuity, but are above all a major alternative to our contemporary or modern ways of living. They introduce dimensions of quality into our frequently alienated lives and the modest quality of our relationships that are caught between concrete, asphalt and the atom. We do not speak here merely of technological quality, quality of design or visual quality, but principally of the quality of our relationships, contacts and communications that are materialised through and with the help of the vast range of the products of artisanship. This in fact, may be the most we can desire and hope for form the modern period. A rich selection of the fragments of this efforts is available in Rustika gallery.

prof. Janez Bogataj
Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana