What is Hidden in The Museum?

Christian worship represented collective ritual ceremonies, which were always associated with the use of valuable liturgical vessels and vestments, often elaborately crafted.

For all these occasions, unique equipment was created. The exhibition includes, for example, unique pewter goblets, which belonged from the end of the 15th century to the necessary representative equipment of the craftsmen's guilds, teapots and jugs, a wedding chest, porcelain tableware and luxurious glassware for the festive table, including lavish table decorations. Expensive clothing was also part of the festivities, especially at court.

In the Kunstkammer’s encyclopaedic structure, objects of a technical nature enjoyed a high status.  Mechanical instruments were greatly admired as ingenious creations that penetrated the mysteries of nature created by the divine “Mechanic” and facilitated its domination. The height of this combination of science and the arts was manifested by astronomical devices, clocks and various mechanical contrivances – movable automata. 

Kunstkammers were not only treasure troves of accumulated wisdom, but also played the role of creative workshops and laboratories. The wealth of collections provided a stimulus for scientific exploration and magical experiments, and was also exploited by physicians and natural scientists, as well as astrologists and alchemists.

Renaissance art collections were intended to demonstrate the relationship between natural and artistic forms, the transitions between the miracles of nature and human creations. 

Various and often contradictory artistic currents turned to nature.  They projected onto it the dual direction of human existence - on the one hand, the desire for a rationally graspable and balanced world, for stability of order, and on the other hand, the will for change and spontaneous dynamism.

Clothes cover, hide, and also shape the human body to a greater or lesser degree. The fashionable silhouette was always formed by the cultural and aesthetic norms of the day. Fashion would variously obscure or emphasise the body’s shape, even to the detriment of comfort and practicality.

The human physique was also formed and impacted by the use of accessories and jewels. 

New demands for domestic furnishing and equipment fuelled the development of design in the 19th century. Emphasis was placed on mobility, efficiency of space, universality, and ease of use, besides the basic requirement of functionality. 

The history of design suggests that every original creative idea is simply a link in a connecting chain of forms, in a sequence of different solutions to the same or similar problem. New inventions interact with serial replication and variation of what has already existed before.

Diverse elements of play abound throughout 20th-century design, especially in the last third of the period, dominated by the demands of awakened emotionality and semantic differentiation, as documented by the ironising and subverted plays of postmodernity.