Kafka motifs on Festka racing bike: order from New York
Festka is a manufacturer of carbon bicycle frames based in the Czech capital of Prague. Most recently, the company has made a name for itself with sophisticated, customised one-off designs.
The Czechs' latest project is a bike with Franz Kafka motifs, which was commissioned from Festka by a New York bike enthusiast. "For a company as closely associated with Prague as Kafka, it made perfect sense," says Tom Hnida, the company's art director. The world-famous Czech writer was born in Prague in 1883.
Festka design racing bike: ideas from Kafka books
The client provided the designers with a list of scenes and ideas from Kafka's books that he wanted to have depicted on the bicycle frame. The two stories he liked best were "A Hunger Artist" and "An Imperial Embassy". For further inspiration, he chose a series of quotes from Kafka's notebooks and gave some hints as to how he imagined the images.
After some deliberation, Tom Hnida approached illustrator Michal Bacak, who had already realised two design projects with Festka in 2019 and 2020. Bacak was absolutely delighted with Lyndon's ideas and accepted the commission immediately. Bacak's ability to tell stories through drawings and not least his designs won over the client.
Kafkaesque scenes reinterpreted
"Everything flows and nobody steps into the same river twice," says Michal Bacak, describing his approach. "This bike, the third one I've illustrated for Festka, was the biggest challenge of all. From the moment Tom came into my studio and told me what the client wanted, the river swelled to a flood of biblical proportions. It wasn't so much the technique or colouring, but the content. I'm transferring parts of Kafka's unique universe onto a bicycle! I don't think I can say that I fully understood this literary genius, but I think I got closer to him by reinterpreting some really Kafkaesque scenes from his work in my own way," says the product design graduate, who has also worked for other well-known companies, including the luxury label Hermès.
The basis for this project is a Festka Scalatore with customised geometry, built with the SRAM Red eTap groupset, Enve cockpit and Enve SES wheels. Festka does not provide any information on the price of the Franz Kafka bike; the Czech company offers the Scalatore frameset from €5990, and a complete bike from €9220.
Thomas Musch
Publisher
