Dad didn’t stand a chance
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Petr Tvaroh was born on 13 February 1964 in Nová Ves near České Budějovice as the second son of Jan and Marie Tvaroh. His grandfather Jan Tvaroh trained as a potter in the pottery workshop of Karel Čada before the war. In 1942 he bought the workshop from Karel Čada and became a tradesman. The pottery workshop ran well until the early 1950s, when the communists forced Jan Tvaroh to close the shop and he had to find a job. As a former tradesman, he had a hard time finding a job. He ended up as a locomotive cleaner on the railway in České Velenice. It was only thanks to the help of a well-known lawyer that he did not lose his machines and workshop equipment. At the end of the 1960s, Jan Tvaroh managed to obtain a permit for limited production of ceramics. However, he still had to have an official job and all his production was under the strict control of the District National Committee (ONV). At that time, people waited several years for his products. Problems with bourgeois origins were passed on in the Tvaroh family from generation to generation. Despite the interest, talent and desire of Jan Tvaroh Jr. to continue the family tradition, the communists did not allow Jan Tvaroh’s son to enter the Secondary School of Arts and Crafts in Bechyně. Instead, he had to apprentice as a tile-layer. Jan Tvaroh’s grandson, Petr Tvaroh, still had problems getting into the ceramics apprenticeship in Hrdějovice in 1979. If his grandfather’s influential customer had not helped him then, he would not have been accepted to the apprenticeship because of his class background. After the war, he worked briefly in Hrdějovice at the Jihotvar company. After 1989, like many of his colleagues, he went into the private sphere, reopened his grandfather’s workshop and has been making a successful living in ceramics ever since. Despite forty years of communist totalitarianism, the family tradition of his work continues. In 2024 Petr Tvaroh lived with his family in Nová Ves No. 47.
