The Spires of Prague Prague, 1894. The son of a miller and a baker’s daughter, Jaroslav Vodrážka begins a life shaped by the shifting borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His early impulses are raw, found in the margins of newspapers and the dust of sidewalks. He eventually finds formal discipline at a school for the applied arts, mastering the intricate mechanics of printmaking. Then, the world fractures. The Great War pulls him fr…