The ethnographic sub-collection (signature Eg, 4154 items as of 12/2022) is, due to its composition, the most diverse sub-collection of the municipal museum. It was created by merging of several separate units during the reorganisation of the collection at the end of the 1960s (products, tools, instruments, guilds, the town, textiles, ceramics, furniture). The largest part of the collection consists of the museum’s historical collections and also partly the Hruška collection. At the end of the 1960s, when the museum was profiled as an ethnographic museum for the Upper Pojizeří region, the sub-collection was supplemented with painted furniture, tools, ceramics and tin. The items were redistributed from the Museum of Glass and Jewellery in Jablonec nad Nisou and from the closed town museums in Smržovka and Chrastava. Painted folk furniture was transferred to the museum by the Cultural Department of the National Committee in Jablonec nad Nisou from organised collections.

The most valuable part of the ethnographic sub-collection is the collection of objects related to the activities of guilds and trade associations. These were the items behind the initial idea of founding a museum in Železný Brod. They include guild banners, seals, guild chests and tin tankards. Other major categories of the sub-collection include folk nativity scenes, folk sculptures, wooden gingerbread moulds, pottery and porcelain, everyday objects, tools and instruments and school items

The sub-collection of jewellery (signature B, 2196 items as of 12/2022) focuses primarily on documenting jewellery production in Železný Brod and its immediate surroundings. The sub-collection is closely associated with the glass sub-collection, which it complements and at times overlaps. Its most significant parts are items which, like the glass sub-collection, illustrate the production of the Železný Brod glass school, interwar and contemporary private jewellery manufacturers (M. Mrklas, F. Halama, B. Mrklas, Palla, Klápště, Kortan) and Železný Brod glass. A smaller part consists of samples that come from the Pojizerský Industrial and Export Institute.

Due to the range of types of items, the jewellery sub-collection is very diverse and includes specimens of various types of beads, clothing accessories and necklaces as well as glass badges, plaquettes and flasks. The jewellery sub-collection also includes Jaroslav Brychta’s first attempts at fused glass sculpture and samples of the use of glass waste in architecture.

The archaeological sub-collection (signature A, 149 items as of 12/2022) comes from the museum’s historical collections. Its core consists of the surviving amateur archaeological activities undertaken by the owner of the Návarov estate, Ing. Vilém Vaníček (1875-1961). In the 1930s and 1940s, together with others, he carried out archaeological investigations of suspected stone barrows and tombs at sites in the Železný Brod and Vysocko regions (Zlatá Olešnice, Sklenařice, Kozákov, Stanové, Sklenařice, etc) and also at Návarov Castle. Vaníček donated most of his archaeological finds to the Železný Brod Museum and a further collection from his excavations can be found in the museum in Vysoké nad Jizerou. The most significant element of this collection is a number of late Gothic and early Renaissance tiles from Návarov Castle. The Vaníček collection forms the main part of the archaeological collection of the Municipal Museum. The other part is made up of chance acquisitions with no further identification of the circumstances of their discovery. An Etruscan two-piece bronze buckle from the 7th millennium BC is something of a curiosity in the archaeological sub-collection.

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The museum’s collections comprise 12 sub-collections, the most extensive being the glass and ethnography sub-collections. However, other sub-collections are equally important and contain many interesting exhibits covering archaeology, jewellery, militaria, paintings, sculptures, natural history, textiles, photographs and postcards. Many of our collections can be found at eSbirky.cz.

Collections at the Železný Brod Municipal Museum

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When houses and flats, attics and warehouses are cleared out, things that at first glance may not be of any value, but may carry information that could significantly increase our knowledge, are irretrievably lost. We won’t clear out your loft for you or assess the financial value of your property, but you can contact us for advice before you throw anything away. Or bring unwanted items to the museum.

 

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