The Ornamental Prints Collection of the UPM
The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague was founded by the Prague Chamber of Trade and Commerce in 1885. Its holdings at that time, which today constitute the core of the graphic arts collection, comprised artistically embellished, highly valuable printed books. Oddly enough, these were originally bought because of their richly decorated covers. Thanks to the interest of the first museum directors, Karel Chytil (1857–1934) and Frantisˇek A. Borovsky (1852–1933), the acquisition program was gradually expanded and attention was also focused on the historical development of the script, book illustrations and frontispieces, and eventually on the overall design of the books as works of art in their own right.
From the 1880s, the so-called “pattern collection”, which contained sketches and designs for objects belonging to other fields of the applied arts, developed simultaneously with the library. This systematically ordered collection, originally compiled in the museum library, also included numerous ornamental prints. As in
other fields in which the museum maintained collections, efforts were then being made to raise the standard of craftwork in Bohemia. The drawings and prints served primarily as objects of study and design models for students attending drawing classes at the School of Applied Arts in Prague.
Later, the ornamental prints were separated from the rest of the museum library collection and consolidated with the other graphic arts collections. Today, together with the book collection and the photography and poster collections, they form one of the four departments of the museum. The department collection houses some 300,000 objects, including about 35,000 posters, 70,000 photographs (by Czech and European artists) and some 30,000 books. The drawings and graphic art (excluding posters) are estimated to include more than 100,000 folios; the most important holdings are preliminary sketches and drawn designs (30,000 objects), the ex libris collection (about 15,000 objects) and devotional graphic arts objects (15,000 small devotional pictures), as well as occasional drawings and commercial art, diplomas, calendars, playing cards, labels, postcards, wallpaper and similar objects. A collection of contemporary graphic design rounds off the department.
Closely associated with the history of the ornamental prints collection were not
only its founders and curators – Frantisˇek A. Borovsky, for example, was a
recognized expert on historical prints and particularly on the oeuvre of Wenzel Hollar – but also its donators and patrons. The Museum of Decorative Arts acquired valuable graphic arts folios, ornamental designs and books on architecture through generous donations made by entrepreneurs and collectors such as Adalbert Freiherr von Lanna (1836–1909) and the bookbinder Jan V. Spott (1853–ca. 1935) as well as from the estates of the Czech architects Antonín Barvitius (1823–1902) and Josef Fanta (1856–1954).
Classified by subject, the most significant prints are those found in architecture books of the 16th to 18th centuries, (by authors such as Andrea Palladio, Walter Rivius resp. Ryff, Hans Vredeman de Vries, Daniel Meyer, Georg Andreas Böckler, Andrea Pozzo, Paul Decker, Johann Jacob Schübler, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Salomon Kleiner), armorials and emblem books (Ottavio Strada, Jacobus à Bruck) or calligraphic specimens and ABC books (the authors of which include Anton Neudörfer, Lucas Kilian and Mauro Poggi). Of particular interest are rare objects by Bohemian artists and craftsmen, such as the pattern books of Johann Balzer, or Marcus Nonnenmacher’s “Der architektonische Tischler oder das Pragerische Säulenbuch” (“The Architectonic Joiner or the Prague Book of Orders”).
Among the numerous single folios that have been included in the project are grotesques by Renaissance masters (the oldest of which include copper engravings by Nicoletto da Modena, Agostino Veneziano, Heinrich Aldegrever and Hans Sebald Beham), omnibus volumes of designs for metalwork in the styles of the late Renaissance and Mannerism (Virgil Solis, Erasmus Hornick, Aegidius Sadeler), ornamental fantasies by Stefano della Bella, and numerous works by French and German designers of the Baroque and Rococo periods (Daniel Marot, Jean
Le Pautre, Franz Xaver Habermann, Francois de Cuvilliés).
The collections of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague make it possible to follow the development of ornamental prints up into the modernist period and also provide access to equally noteworthy prints from the periods of historicism and Jugendstil – which in the past have been unjustly disparaged – for further research (e.g. the famous “Documents Décoratifs” and “Figures Décoratives” by Alphonse Mucha).
Radim Vondráček
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