Zvuky Prahy / Sounds of Prague

The Vrsovice factory started the mass production of snaps, pins and other metal fittings and notions in 1902. Since then, the existence of KOH-I-NOOR comp. somehow continues and it is one of the few still existing industrial units in Praha. Internationally most famous is the android like logo of the company: a girl face with a snap instead of her eye. Naming the snap was o­ne of Waldes’ great managerial and strategic moves. A picture of the snaps with the stamped letters K-I-N was used as a business logo, with whose help the company expanded o­nto foreign markets (branch offices were founded in Dresden – 1904, Warsaw, 1908, Paris, 1911, New York, 1912). It was for the advertising campaign in the United States that the world-famous “MISS KIN” company logo – a picture of a girl with a KOH-I_NOOR snap instead of her eye – was developed. It is said that the logo was thought up o­n board the boat o­n the way to the America, when it o­ne of the travelers placed as a joke an enlarged snap used for advertising to her eye instead of a monocle. For Waldes this joke was a spark of inspiration, he photographed the girl and his friends the painter František Kupka and Vojtěch Preissig created a new logo from MISS KIN