The book introduces the art protis technique and examines its development after the end of its so-called golden age. It focuses on the institutional, personal, and material conditions of its persistence through interviews with actors connected to studio operations, the privatization of the technology, attempts at its revival, and processes of museum collection-building. The second part is based on the author’s own experience of creating tapestries and combines diary-based reflection with a theoretical discussion of the relationship between machine production, craft, and contemporary art. Art protis is situated within a feminist framework of textile art, offering a critique of the aestheticized discourse of craft revival that neglects the socio-economic conditions of materiál production. The publication seeks to dismantle the opposition between technology and handwork and to position art protis within a broader socio-cultural, historical, and productive context.

The research was carried out at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Brno University of Technology, within the project “The Use of Sheep’s Wool in Contemporary Fine and Applied Art”, supported through targeted funding for Specific University Research provided by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic in 2024.

This publication was created with the support of the State Fund for Culture of the Czech Republic.