Museum of Arts and Crafts: Permanent Collection

In the first room of the permanent display, objects of fine and applied arts created during the period from the 14th to the 16th century are on view; however, only some of them actually bear the characteristics of the formal lanugage of the Gothic. While in some parts of Europe, primarily in Italy, the features of the Gothic had already been replaced with those of the Renaissance as early as the 15th century, in Gaermany, England they lasted until the early or indeed deep into the 16th century. For applied art objects, elements of Gothic vocabulary are often used as decorative details. Unlike the church furniture, which followed the development of the style in parallel with the architecture, in the making of secular furniture, they appeared only during the 14th century. In the domain of furniture design, this is the period in which production and reorganisation within the guilds was advanced, leading to specialisation within the carpentry trade. As well as decorative motifs taken from architecture – the pointed arches, rosettes, tracery, trefoils, quatrefoils, plant motifs – a style of ornamentation particularly characteristic of furniture and adapted to the traits of the material was developed. Relatively few items of furniture have been preserved from the late medieval period, making it not very easy to give a complete illustration of the way in which secular interiors of the period were furnished. A chest is on display – the most widespread type of Gothic furniture; as well as is primary function for the storage of clothing, when equipped with cushions it also was used for seating and sometimes would be used as a table and was an essential part of any woman’s dowry. 

In the room devoted to the art of the Renaissance representative items from the collections of furniture, textile, painting, glass, ceramics and metalwork created in Mediterranean and central European countries as well as in Croatia between the 15th and the 17th centuries are on show. In this period, when opulent noblemen became the most important clients for and patrons of the arts and crafts, the construction and furnishing of palaces helped the carpenter’s trade to flourish.

The museum's furniture collection contains a much larger number of items belonging to the Renaissance and the Mannerist styles than to the Gothic. These objects have various places of origin; the majority were made in Italy, wellspring of the Renaissance, i.e. in its regions, which had their own specific forms and decorative motifs. The exhibited chair and armchair, typical types of furniture for seating, only hint at the richness of formal variants characteristic of this period. Along with the table, which was no longer of the folding version, and the chest, they comprised the basic equipment of an interior.

The remainder of Europe, which accepted the new style only from the 16th century, developed a specific stylistic and formal vocabulary that was already in possession of all the features of Mannerism. In this period, new types of furniture arose – the studiolo cabinet and the cabinet, which flourished in the 17th century. 

The striving to give an impression of opulence, monumentality and dynamism – features of the art of the Baroque in the 17th and 18th centuries – is illustrated by a selection from the holdings of the Museum in two rooms of the permanent display. Among the objects displayed, the most numerous are specimens from the furniture collection. Owing to the use of new technologies and the availability of costly materials, in this period an exceptional diversity of types and forms was produced. An object of prestigious decorative appeal, often the result of virtuoso craftsmen of various trades, the cabinet was to set an important mark on the production of furniture in the 17th century. Cabinets with numerous (secret) drawers were made of costly materials, were opulently decorated, in line with their contents, which made them genuine works of art.

Rococo is a period that gave a new meaning to the idea of amenities, and the main characteristics of the style – decorativeness, appeal, intricacy of form – can be seen in interior decoration as well. From the spaces of ceremony, social life moved into smaller and more intimate salons, and the lightness and refinement of the furnishing of interiors corresponded to the intellectual mood of the society of the time. Light tones prevailed in the interiors; console tables and chests of drawers, above which there were mirrors, are integral parts of the wall surfaces. Seating furniture and tables could be freely grouped in the space as required. New types of seating were developed, which along with innovations in a constructive sense also became more comfortable, as illustrated by the exhibited armchair (à la reine) upholstered in silk brocade of the time. In the 18th century, a time of great discoveries and fascination with the Far East, Europe discovered the secret (the Arcanum) of producing the most precious kind of ceramic ware – porcelain. The first manufactory was set up in Meissen in 1710 and then in Vienna in 1718; by the end of the 18th century the French royal manufactory had been founded in France, the imperial manufactory in St Petersburg as well as English, Italian and numerous German porcelain manufactories. European crowned heads and aristocrats collected china items as signs of their status, decorated their living spaces with them or kept them in special rooms – porcelain cabinets. The bureau cabinet on show that is meant for displaying china is a more modest version of the private space for this purpose.

As against the preciousness and decorativeness of the Rococo, Neoclassicism marks a return to the stricter forms of classical antiquity. In the narrow sense it is the style of the last decades of the 18th century, but Antique models were the basis of formal treatment in the styles of the first decades of the 19th century too – of Empire and Biedermeier. The furniture illustrates the main characteristics of neoclassic form – refined simplicity and elegant calm, symmetry, and architectural formal principles with clear and austere articulation of the structural elements. The ornamental repertoire consists of Antique motifs (meander, rosette, ovulus, garland, vase, horn of plenty, laurel leaf...) that come up in carved or inlaid decorations, motifs on fabrics and forms for mountings. Among the examples of classical furnishing in the Museum collection there are some specimens produced in Croatia. One of the reasons for this is the fact that the number of local craftsmen and of those who had come from various parts of the Habsburg Empire and Germany had increased. The obligatory journeys made by the newly qualified journeymen and the founding of drawing schools in which in the last decades of the 18th century the pupils learned from common models contributed to the spread of the new style. 

Glass production in the Neoclassicism period is characterised by simplification of form and decoration. Decorations on glass include gathered ribbons, spirals, flowers and meanders, portraits, masks or wreaths with fruit. Of the glassware on show, a glass of Johann Joseph Mildner with a double medallion on the surface is of particular interest.

The whole of the art of the Empire period was designed to legitimate Napoleon and his power. The spread of the style was helped by Napoleon’s campaigns but also by the increased exports of products and books of samples and models to European countries. Empire influences in Croatia are only episodic, and are visible in miniature portrait painting and in the fine crafts. There are few examples of Empire furnishing in the Museum’s collection and they mostly bear the formal features of the Viennese variant of the style, which can be seen in the more copious employment of carved and inlaid decoration, without any marked monumentality. In the shaping of furniture the refined elegance of early Neoclassicism is abandoned, and grandeur and monumentality tend to be stressed. The smooth surfaces of the furnishing were most often veneered with expensive mahogany, and the main decorative elements are mounts of gilt bronze. Decorative motifs inspired by the art of Ancient Egypt and Imperial Rome prevail. This influence is obvious in the typology of the furniture: bedside tables in the shape of pyramids or columns (somno, so called), and chaises longues of the Rćcamier type with the characteristic curved sides, clearly deriving from Roman Antiquity. 

The stylistic expression of the rising middle class, Biedermeier appeared soon after the Napoleonic Wars and the political turmoil in the countries of central Europe between 1815 and 1848. In style and with respect to the spirit of the time Biedermeier was best expressed in interior decoration and the decor of burgher interiors. Applied art, particularly the furnishing of the time, in forms and decorative elements, drew on Neoclassicism. Although in its essence opposed to the monumental and grandiloquent character of Empire design, Biedermeier furniture did borrow some of the decorative motifs of Empire. In contrast, bric-a-brac of glass, china and paper is of a sentimental nature and is given an entirely unpretentious form. North west Croatia, at that time politically, economically and geographically related to the Habsburg Empire, was mainly focused on Vienna – the centre of production of Biedermeier furniture. 

The term Historicism covers a wide range of neo-styles or revivalist forms that come into existence in the 19th century, based on the appropriation of formal or decorative elements from earlier stylistic periods. Traditional forms of objects of applied arts are adapted to the needs of the modern time, and the development of technology and the transition from handwork to machine production enabled greater and cheaper production. Quite often ersatz and new materials and techniques are employed, through which the appearance of high cost is achieved. In forms of objects of fine craft it is quite common to find the simultaneous presence of elements of quite different styles – Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo. For example, the elements of decoration for this clock were taken from the Gothic repertoire, while the composition and form draw to a great extent on the Neoclassical tradition. 

In the part of the permanent display devoted to the Crafts School, which had an important role in the development of the fine crafts in Croatia, works of pupils who attended the carpentry, ceramics and locksmith departments are presented. Some of the items are done after drawings of Herman Bollé, the founder of the school.

The name Art Déco – one of the stylistic trends between the two wars – was derived from the name of the great world exhibition the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925. Numerous Croatian artists showed their works at the Paris exhibition: in the pavilion of the Kingdom of the SCS, designed by Zagreb architect Stjepan Hribar, the display was designed by Tomislav Krizman. Prominent Croatian artists including Joza Kljaković, Zlatko Šulentić, Marijan Trepše and Vladimir Becić took part in the exterior and interior decoration of the pavilion. A large number of exhibits from the Paris show as well as the architectural drawings of the national pavilion and the set-up of the theatre section were brought to the Museum of Arts and Crafts on the ending of the exposition, and are still kept in its collections today.

The collection of graphic and product design was formed as a distinct unit in the 1950s at the time when the Museum assumed the role of one of the key promoters of design in Croatia. Product design is presented through three groups of products – chairs, glass and ceramics – that, thanks to mass production and the impact on everyday life, are among the most common tasks of designers. It was the chair, and its close kin the armchair, that in the 20th century became the designer’s laboratory for testing out innovations in the use of new materials and technologies and hence it went through more transformations than any other item of furniture. The Le Corbusier armchair of 1929 was among the first to use bent steel tubes as a structural element, while Aalto’s armchair no. 41 (1932) of bent laminated veneers marked a turning point in the design of wooden furniture. Three armchairs by leading Croatian designers and architects Bernardo Bernardi, Radovan Nikšić and Ferdo Rosić are examples of high quality Croatian design after World War II. These specimens of furniture however did not, unluckily, get into industrial production; these were either prototypes or one-off pieces made for particular interiors. 

A selection of twenty posters by Ivan Picelj, Boris Bućan, Mihalo Arsovski and Vjenceslav Richter created in Croatia from 1950 to 1990 presents the graphic design collection at the museum's permanent display. In the seventies, a kind of duel was fought by Mihajlo Arsovski and Boris Bućan in their typographically rich, radical and witty exhibition and theatre posters on the streets of Zagreb. In the following decade, Bućan’s conceptual poster based mainly on photography was replaced by a highly expressive and painterly idiom. An important segment of the graphic design collection consists of posters meant for the promotion of the Museum of Arts and Crafts itself designed by the leading Croatian artists in this field. On the occasion of the opening of the new permanent display of 1962, in a series of posters Ivan Picelj thought up the visual identity for the Museum; a poster for the ninetieth anniversary of the founding of the Museum was designed by Mihajlo Arsovski, while the Museum’s centenary, in 1980, was commemorated in a poster authored by Boris Bućan.

The Judaic Collection of the Museum of Arts and Crafts is one of the few collections of Jewish religious objects both existing in Croatia today and open to the public. These are objects that are primarily related to rites in the synagogue or at home, or are of a profane character and yet are related to Jewish culture and tradition from the 17th to the 20th century. 

The museum collection of religious sculpture with artefacts in a temporal sequence from the first half of the 15th to the first decades of the 20th century makes up one of the biggest and most important sets of its kind in Croatia.