On 14 June, American artist and calligrapher, Susan Loy, will unveil a watercolor painting, so detailed that it took her two years to complete; the painting, titled Czech Flower Alphabet, commemorates Norbert F. Čapek and the Flower Celebration that he introduced to Czech Unitarians in June 1923.

Loy will present the painting at the annual Flower Celebration in the newly remodeled Čapek Hall in the Unitaria on Anenská in Prague 1.

This event is the culmination of a week-long series of videos to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Čapek’s 3 June birthday.

A video, “Flower Connections: An Interview with Calligrapher Susan Loy,” will premier on 12 June and can be viewed via the Czech Unitaria website and later directly on YouTube.

Susan Loy

canThe 15-minute video records an interview of Susan Loy in her Prague studio, conducted by art historian, Jana Ticha. The interview covers Loy’s connection to Čapek’s Flower Celebration, the research that she conducted in order to plan the watercolor painting, and the technique she used to create the painting.

Loy’s 56 x 56 cm watercolor painting includes a Czech flower alphabet, a wreath of thirty-one flower species common to the Czech Republic. Each flower is identified by its Czech common name, its Latin name, and its English common name.

The painting includes the first stanza of Čapek’s hymn, “Kindle the flames of love,” hand-lettered in English and in Czech, which surrounds a large sunflower, a traditional symbol for Czech Unitarians.

The unifying motif in the wreath and border are the leaves and flowers of Tilia cordata, small-leaved linden or lime, the national tree of the Czech Republic.

Susan Loy moved to Prague in April 2018 with her husband, Ron Ayers, and two dogs, Miss Lilly and Rocky, with a long-stay cultural visa sponsored by the Czech Unitaria.

Loy founded Literary Calligraphy® in 1983, and Ayers joined the company in 1990. Loy is known in the United States for serving as “Artist on the Lawn” at the 1998 White House Easter Egg Roll in Washington, D.C., and subsequently creating a poster featuring White House flowers.

Her book, Flowers, the Angels’ Alphabet, is a standard reference for floral dictionaries and the Victorian Language of Flowers.

Every seventh Prague inhabitant is a foreigner and a half of them have permanent residence in the Czech Republic, an analysis by the Prague Institute of Planning and Development (IPR) shows.

In 2018, the number of foreigners registered in Prague exceeded 200,000. Overall, foreigners make up more than 15% of all Prague residents.

The analysis also states that foreigners are becoming a stable part of Prague’s future population and are a perspective source of workforce for the local labor market.

The most numerous group of foreigners living in Prague are 51,000 Ukrainians, followed by 31,500 Slovaks and 24,000 Russians. Taken together, these three countries form more than half of the total number of foreigners in Prague.

Foreigners are also becoming a stable part of Prague’s future population. This stabilization is particularly necessary to meet the needs of the labor market, as unemployment in Prague is one of the lowest in EU.

The number of citizens from the European Union is 1/3 of all foreigners. The remaining two-thirds are citizens from the so-called third countries: Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein.

Almost 50% of foreigners have a permanent residence in Prague, which confirms the stability of this Prague population, especially in relation to the labor force potential.