Art Industrial University was founded as the Art Industrial School in Prague on the decision of the Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Joseph I. By the edict of the Ministry of Culture and Education 10.6.1885.
The task of the school was education in arts of skilful powers for the Art industry and training of the teaching powers for education of art industry and for teaching drawing at secondary schoolsì. The school was depending straight on the Ministry, not on the provincial school council.
- The school as a total was divided on: Universal school
- Vocational and Specialised schools
- Specialised school For Women's professions
- Evening and Sunday courses
The Universal school was divided on painting and sculpturing section. Students were leaded to comprehension of the form, its stylisation and way of the technical process, than to independent experiments with composition in higher years. The practice was supplemented with lessons of descriptive geometry, sciences of the style, anatomy, sciences of colours, chemical technology and art handicrafts. Special subject was the history of art. The correspondencial stylistic, calculation, making bills of exchange and management of the books were teaching also.
The Universal school has prepared students for the entry to the praxes of the industry of art. At the same time it was preparatory school for vocational and specialised schools. Only students from the Universal school who showed special talent for the graphic work were admitted. The study lasted from 3 to 5 years. On the Art Industrial School in Prague, there originated until the year 1890:
- Vocational School for the Decorative Architecture (Ohmann)
- Vocational Sculptural School Mostly of the Figural Style (Myslbek)
- Vocational Sculptural School Mostly of the Ornamental Style (Kloucek)
- Vocational School for the Decorative Drawing and Painting Mostly of the Figural Style
- (Zenisek)
- Specialised School for Art Industrial Work with the Metal (Kloucek)
- Specialised School of the Art of Carving (Kastner)
- Specialised School for the Textile Arts (Stibral)
- Specialised School for the Painting of Flowers (Schikaneder)
- Specialised School for the Artificial Embroidery (Krauthova, Kudelkova) as
- Specialised school For Womenís professions
Students were accepted to the Art Industrial School from 14 years on the base of their own presented works. They had to pass the compulsory entrance examination of their talent since the year 1890. Graduation on the Universal School gave them the majority of the theoretical preparation and they could give more time to the practical education and practice when continuing on Vocational or Specialised Schools.
On the report of Vocational and Specialised Schools , there was mentioned the branch, lasting of the study, results and reference of the absolvent. Very important specific of the education was the connection of students of all the years into one atelier of the corresponding special school so younger students could get experiences from older and could improve their aesthetic perception.
Already the first director architect Frantisek Schmoranz tried to change this vocational school to university. This project that he elaborated for this purpose wasnít realised. The negotiations were interrupted by the death of Fr. Schmoranz. Even so the Art Industrial School had significant historical influence at the development of the fine arts of Czech and Slovak countries. The Ministry published the permission to manage the school by self-government of the staff after the foundation of the Czechoslovakia in the year 1919. The school became the central artistic educational institute in Czechoslovakia, parallel to the Academy of Fine Arts.
The Art Industrial school obtained also the Ministry's promise about getting the statute of the university for its special schools where since the year 1940 were admitted students older than 18 years after graduation on the secondary school or after finishing other artistic school. The Universal School was statutory abolished, the Art Industrial School got the statute of the University as late as in the year 1946.
The Art Industrial School was leaded by the artists since the beginning. Their work formed the progress of the Czech and Slovak fine arts and ranked it at the head of the social culture. Many students and absolvents of the Art Industrial School, also graphic artists, who were or became their professors after the disintegration of Austro-Hungary and after the foundation of the Czechoslovakia in the year 1918 were in the movement of the artistic youth in the beginning of the 20th century, which refused the historical conventions of styles and also the widespread decorativism of the secession. They founded Artel in the year 1908.
The creed of artists united in Artel was to do the art for the common day which would represent the sense for the poetry of life, not the luxury and which would be democratically available. They wanted to create beautiful industrial things whose shape would proceed from the characteristic and from the grace of the material.
The work of students and professors of the Art Industrial School exceed the initial decorativistical scheme of the nationally tuned stylisation. The new forming of the industrial art which informed about the human present with the needed extend of aestetical equivalency, the school presented in the international exhibition of the decorative arts in Paris in 1925. Many of the showed works got the appreciation.
The collection of the lace of the student Marie Serbouskova got the Golden Medal and Diploma of Honour. Marie Serbouskova-Sedlackova) was devoted to the bobbin-lace during her whole life and the conviction that the lace should be everyday's sip of beauty and should sensibly serve to a man filled up with her work. She belongs between the foundating personality of the Czech modern lace.
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The Art Industrial School educated also, never mind in another branch, Emilie Palickova, whose lace got in the same exhibition in Paris the Grand Prix and the Appreciation of Honour. Her creation pointed out the art of lace in Czechoslovakia to the highest piedestal. She leaded the atelier of the lace and embroidery during 13 years since the year 1946, the year when the school got the statute of the University.
Vocational schools and ateliers teaching artists at the Art Industrial University in Prague whose branch of creation was the lace were leaded by these artists :