About me
From an early age I wanted to know how things work. Anything that could be taken apart, I took apart to find out. I grew up in a workshop: my father founded Drevené kazety at the beginning of the millennium, and I started helping him while I was still at school. First with what a child’s hands can manage, later with the beds, the linings and the assembly. I learned the craft the way it is best learned: on the job, from someone who knows it.
Wood and metal run in my family on both sides: one grandfather is a joiner, the other was a blacksmith. Perhaps that is why, in my ninth year at school, I added metal to wood: blacksmithing, my first jigs and simple machines, which I built because I needed them. It left me with a habit I still have: when a tool does not exist or is not good enough, I build it myself.
In 2017 I began studying mechanical engineering. University gave me what the workshop could not: CAD, CAM, electrical engineering, automation. I took all of it back to the workshop. I stopped welding machines together by eye and started designing them: a belt grinder, a bending machine, the restoration of old machines worth bringing back to life.
I have worked at Drevené kazety for more than fifteen years. Some cases and cutlery canteens I now make entirely myself – the wood, the fittings and the interior, from the first cut to the last screw. The leather-covered interiors of the canteens are my own signature.
In 2020 I founded my own brand. Irija is the Slavic paradise – a place where things do not age. I wanted to bring together under one name everything I make that does not fit into a case: cast brass, forged steel, solid-wood furniture, machines.
Clients
Pieces for clients in Vienna, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. I do not name my clients.