Review article
Four restored tile stoves from Požega
Suzana Kolić Gunjača
; Croatian Conservation Institute, Section for Movable Heritage Documentation, Zagreb, Croatia
Siniša Cvetković
; Croatian Conservation Institute, Department for Wooden polychrome Sculpture, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
In recent years, four glazed tile stoves from two locations in the vicinity of Požega have been subjected to a comprehensive conservation-restoration treatment in the Croatian Conservation Institute, the first of its kind in Croatia. They were the so-called green stove from a mansion in Trenkovo near Požega, and three stoves – the so-called white, grey and brown stoves – from the building of the old silk factory, which nowadays houses the Požega
Conservation Department of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia.
The restoration of four different stoves from Požega is used here merely as a pretext to turn one’s attention to this segment, possibly somewhat neglected, of the decoration of historical interiors in the territory of Croatia. The paper also points to the need for a systematic and comprehensive recording of historical stove types, which certainly still exist, or at least did so until recently, and which testify to the degree of culture in everyday life.
The green stove, the oldest among the stoves from Požega, belongs to the collection of the Požega Municipal Museum, although it originated from the Late Baroque-Classicist Mansion of Baron Franjo Trenk. It has been dated to the period in which the subsequent owners reconstructed the mansion, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This is the only stove of this kind in the Požega region, and an example of the so-called cylindrical or barrel-shaped stoves (Rundofen) that were mostly produced by Austrian, Czech and South Tyrolean workshops in the period between 1790 and 1830. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the same type of glazed ceramic stove was called “Swedish clay stove” or “Strasbourg stove”.
Among other items, three different ceramic stoves were discovered in the Požega Conservation Department – the white, the grey and the brown – and they were subjected to a comprehensive conservation-restoration treatment that was completed in early 2010.
The white stove, the oldest of the three, is a precious example of the so-called Zirkulierofen or Etagenofen, a distinctive type of stove containing openings in its body, which is frequently found in the territory of Bavaria and the Czech Republic. Such stoves were used between the beginning of the 19th century and the 1860s-1870s, in some places even longer, and they represent the subsequent developmental form or variation of cast-iron stoves of the second half of the 18th century, characterized by a similar shape.
The grey stove is, in many features, similar to the white stove. It belongs to the group of stoves that were prevalent in the period between the 1860s and 1890s, when tile stoves of this kind, with a cornice at their top and neo-renaissance motifs and ornaments, were frequently present in bourgeois houses in the territory of southern Germany (Ulm, Landshut, Speyer).
The youngest among the four stoves from Požega is the so-called brown stove. This type of stove became popular in the 1880s and 1890s, when tile stoves were more affordable and thus became an almost regular element of bourgeois interiors throughout Europe. In this period, the stove-making crafts became more numerous and developed in Croatia, too, especially in Zagreb and the surrounding region.
However, due to a lack of archival sources, at this moment one can only speculate as to whether the four Požega stoves were produced in a local workshop or in any of those in Central European.
The conservation and restoration works on all four stoves encompassed disjointing of the stoves, classification and listing of their parts, mechanical cleaning, reconstructions and supplementation of the missing fragments were made. The cracks were filled, the stove elements were toned, re-glazed and finally retouched. All the phases of the works were documented in detail.
After the completion of the conservation-restoration works, the green, white and grey stoves were reassembled at the premises of the Požega Municipal Museum and the Požega Conservation Department, where they will be on permanent display, and the brown stove was rebuilt by the traditional method of building of tile stoves and connected to a chimney, thus allowing it to be used for its original purpose.
Keywords
Swedish clay stove; barrel-shaped glazed ceramic stoves (Rundofen); Zirkulierofen/Etagenofen; Trenkovo Mansion; Požega; Thaller House; conservation-restoration works
Hrčak ID:
103592
URI
Publication date:
20.12.2010.
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