Janka Menkynová worked at the Center of Folk Art Production in Bratislava as an artist, manager, curator, and exhibition organizer for 42 years. Throughout her long career, she delved into a wide range of material groups and created numerous original prototypes of collections of folk art utility artifacts, contributing to the development of designer craftsmanship at the Center. Her artistic work was focused not on designing unique pieces, but on creating small series designs that emphasized the practicality of folk art objects. The broad spectrum of her designs, reflecting creativity and emotional perception of the world around her, aimed to find the purest form of utility objects that would meet the needs and taste of modern people while respecting traditional materials and techniques.

Between 1961 and 1965, she studied textiles at the School of Industrial Arts in Bratislava. After graduation, she worked for two years as a designer at the production cooperative Vzor in Zvolen. She joined the Center of Folk Art Production in 1967, initially as a production artist, then as an independent development artist from 1977, and as the chief artist of the Center from 1993 to 2009.

During her tenure, she created a multitude of designs for utility artifacts using a wide range of natural materials such as wood, branches, corn husks, straw, bark, wire, metal, beads, horn, bone, leather, fabric, ceramics, eggshells, and dough, contributing to the advancement of designer craftsmanship at the Center.

Keywords: handcraft, traditional arts