Komárovské muzeum

About the museum

According to surviving records, the Komárov ironworks date back to the Přemyslid period and played a leading role in the history of the market town. Their greatest fame came from art cast iron at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries under the Counts of Vrbno; in 1828 four blast furnaces were operating here and more than a thousand people worked here. In 1829 Rudolf of Vrbno gathered the most valuable castings into a single exhibition, but after the ironworks were sold to a Viennese firm, the exhibition fell into decay after 1902 and its objects were distributed to other museums.

The present museum was founded on 8 April 1934 by a group of volunteers and officially opened on 1 September 1935 in a former school built on the foundations of an old château. It was closed during the occupation, reopened on 8 May 1960 and again after a reconstruction in 1976. In 1988 it became a company museum, and it opened again on 1 May 2008. Since 2008 the building has been run by the market town of Komárov, and the collections of art cast iron belong to the National Technical Museum in Prague.

The exhibition presents the history of ironworking in Komárov and of art cast iron: small decorative and utility castings including jewellery, monumental sculpture, funerary cast iron, memorial plaques, medals and plaques, and building, interior and garden cast iron. A virtual tour of the underground is also available on the museum’s website.

Highlights

• Art cast iron from the Komárov foundry: jewellery, sculptures, memorial plaques and medals
• Seven thematic sections, from small utility cast iron to monumental sculpture and funerary cast iron
• History of the Komárov ironworks from the Middle Ages to the 19th century
• Virtual tour of the underground on the museum’s website

Permanent exhibition

• Umělecká litina a historie železáren – Exhibition on the ironworking of Komárov and on art castings, from jewellery and small utility cast iron to monumental sculpture, memorial plaques, medals and building cast iron.

Founded

1934

Operated by

Městys Komárov (sbírky umělecké litiny: Národní technické muzeum)

Director

Ing. Josef Erdinger

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