Glass

The glass sub-collection (signature S, 4781 items as of 12/2022) documents the production of glass in Železný Brod and its immediate surroundings. The most significant parts of the sub-collection represent the production of the Železný Brod glass school, interwar producers and former national enterprise Železný Brod Glass.

The sub-collection of glass began to take shape in 1950, when the Železný Brod Glass Company donated a collection of products by local glassmaking companies (at that time already nationalised and incorporated into the company) including Vele, Halama, Pastrnek, Lejsek and Hloušek to the museum’s collections. The sub-collection also included a larger collection of historical glass from the 19th and early 20th century, which was part of the museum’s historical collections. In the late 1960s, the sub-collection was supplemented by a unique and extensive collection of works by students and professors of the Železný Brod Glass School, covering the activities of the school in the years 1920-1960 (works by A. Metelák, J. Brychta, Z. Juny, M. Janků, O. Žák, L. Přenosil, S. Libenský, etc). During the 1960s and 1970s, Železný Brod Glass donated a collection of blown, engraved and cut glass and figurines by renowned artists M. Klinger, J. Tockstein, M. and V. Plátek, A. Drobník, J. Brychtová and S. Libenský. The sub-collection has not been expanded systematically since the 1970s, since at that time the museum was designed primarily as an ethnographic museum, and thus not enough attention was paid to local glassmaking. This situation only began to improve in the 1990s, when the Ethnographic Museum of the Upper Pojizeří was restructured back into the Municipal Museum and opened a new exhibition dedicated to glassmaking in the Železný Brod region. As a result, a more systematic addition to the collections began.