Museum of Old Prints and Folk Pottery
The museum is located in a pleasant house in the corner of the
Štramberk Square which also houses the Information Centre Relax in the Beskydy
Foothills. It was opened in 2006 – on the occasion of the 500th anniversary
of the publication of the Czech (the so-called Venetian) Bible of 1506 which
represents an important and attractive part of a private collection displayed in
the museum. The collection situated in the main section of the building includes
five hundred book copies which reflect the development of local literary culture
and letters from the 15th up to the 19th century. The spirit of this place has
remained the same throughout centuries and is still present in the whole
region.
Exhibition of Folk Pottery
The museum’s stone cellarage houses a collection of folk faience ceramics from 16 Moravian and Slovakian potteries, as well as faience ware produced in Lower Austria, Germany – Rhineland, Istria and Zittau. The production of faience, lead and tin glazed pottery in Moravia experienced its heyday between the first half of the 18th century and 1950s.
Nevertheless, the first faience potteries in Moravia were founded by Anabaptists/Habaners as early as at the end of the 17th century. Habaner faience was typical for its ornamentation applied on the glazing in the colours of the “great fire” (blue, yellow, green, manganese) . It was not until later that more complicated decoration technique involving three firing cycles started to be used (crimson, bright yellow, deep green), emphasising images of people and animals.
The oldest displayed exhibits of the private collection include e.g. a large white Habaner plate, the so-called cardinal’s hat, dating back to the end of the 17th century (Moravia) or a post-Habaner jar featuring the shoemakers’ emblem from 1742 (Moravia).
The private collection of folk pottery displayed in
Štramberk includes also a whimsical, or tricky jar produced in the pottery of
Josef Míčka (Modrá) at the end of the 19th century. The jar features a long
neck formed of a perforated grating that makes it impossible to drink from the
jar without spilling its contents. How to outsmart the whimsical jar then?
“The enlarged upper rim of its neck features several hollow beads. Sometimes
they can be found also on its ear. However, only one of them makes it possible
to suck the delicious drink out of the jar,” suggests Jaromír Veselka, one of
the authors of the Štramberk exhibition.
In 2007 the permanent exhibition in Štramberk
was accompanied by the Catalogue of Folk Pottery published by Šmíra-Print
s.r.o. PhDr. Jiří Pajer, CSc., an ethnologist and archaeologist who has been
exploring excavations of Habaner pottery centres since 1930s has also greatly
contributed to this exhibition. At present he is perhaps the only expert
competent to determine the provenience of the individual faience products. The
catalogue is on offer at the v Museum of Old Editions and Folk Pottery (Square
no. 40, Štramberk, Tel: 556 801 935) for CZK 99.00.
FAIENCE or MAJOLICA?
Technically, there is no difference between faience and majolica. Majolica is a term used for Italian lead and tin glazed pottery; the same products coming from lands north of the Alps are called faience. Faience – coming from the town of Faenzi (where lead and tin glazed pottery was produced) and majolica – originated from the name of the island of Mallorca (which served as a transhipment point of ceramic ware transported from Spain to Italy).
Mount of Olives
The collections of the Museum of Old Prints and Folk Pottery in Štramberk include also the 2nd edition of a rare copy of the “Mount of Olives” from 1704 – written by Matěj Tannera (1630–1692). This displayed work, small in physical size but of a great spiritual value, represents one of the three known prints of this title, dating back to the Baroque period, which have been preserved. It has been loaned from a private collection of Mr. Josef Hrček from Štramberk.
