The collection of artistic cast iron has been developed since the founding of the Prague Technical Museum in 1908. The foundation of the collection, which contains more than 1,500 inventory numbers, consists of collections of products from the ironworks in Komárov, donated to the museum at the end of the 1920s and in 2007. The collection also includes castings from other Czech and Moravian foundries (Nový Jáchymov, Klabava, Blansko, Mariánské údolí near Olomouc, etc.). The collection documents the level of artistic iron foundry work from the early 19th century to the 1930s. The collection includes fireplace slabs and stoves, reliefs, plaques, sculptures, lighting fixtures, decorative vessels, frames, inkwells, highly valued cast iron jewelry from the second quarter of the 19th century, funerary and architectural cast iron, kitchen equipment (baking molds, irons, mortars), and items related to the manufacturing technology (molds, models). The oldest cast iron exhibit, which represents the period of the first artistically designed cast iron objects, is a part of a prism-shaped stove—a side panel from the second half of the 16th century, depicting the parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus, based on a design by the Hessian carver Philipp Soldan. Among the most artistically valuable and technologically advanced pieces in the collection are castings from the Komárov ironworks from the first half of the 19th century, originating from the period when the ironworks were owned by the enterprising Vrbna family from Hořovice.
Kostelní 42, Prague 7, Czech Republic