Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague

This guide to the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague opens with an unlikely image: a warplane factory run by the German firm Junkers operating inside a museum built to celebrate craftsmanship, during the nineteen forties occupation. It steps back to the museum's founding in 1885 by reformers worried about factory goods replacing old glassblowing and goldsmithing skills, and to architect Josef Schulz's building rising beside the Old Jewish Cemetery. Notice how close he set it to the cemetery wall, in what remained of Prague's Jewish quarter.