History of Museum
The
Museum of Puppets was opened in 1972 in a renaissance building
called the Mydlar House. It was built by a Chrudim burger - Matej
Mydlar in 1573-1577 and a little minaret-like tower was added
later by his son Daniel. The museum funds were based on a private
collection of Prof. PhDr. Jan Malík (1904-1980), an inexhaustible
organiser of events connected with puppets, a practical puppeteer
and a theoretician, historian, pedagogue and collector. He also
asked each UNIMA (“Union Internationale de la Marionnette“) national
centre to donate a sample of their national puppets to the museum.
Over the first 30 years, the museum collections grew in size greatlyand
new additions are continuously made. Today the museum owns about
8.300 puppets and some 43.600 other exhibits (stage designs and
scale models, decorations, graphic art inspired by puppetry, posters
and programmes, photographs, manuscripts,publications and many
more). A performance with puppets, as any other stage performance,
is a transient experience. It is alive only at the time of acting.
That is why we must be all the more thorough in assembling any
and all available material on the art of puppetry, records, and,
today, also videorecordings. What can be preserved is the puppet
itself. It is true that it cannot tell us much about the quality
of the performance, but it is (in most cases) a work of art in
itself. It may attract you by its expression, it may be a demonstration
of the techniques used, of various national puppet traditions,of
the characteristic style of its creator, carvers,... It may be
quite an emotional experience just to look at it. All of these
are the reasons why there is such a museum as ours. This is why
it collects and deals with documents related to the development
of Czech and, as far as possible, international puppetry. This
is why it exhibits puppets both in its own premises and in other
places in our country and abroad.
Where
the museum is housed
The
first and initially also the only building in which the museum
was located was the beautiful renaissance Mydlář´s House (No.
74). The house was built (or rather remodelled) by a Chrudim burger,
Matěj Mydlář (whose name derived from "mýdlo" meaning
soap, as his profession was to make soap and candles), in 1573-1576.
On the face of the three-storey building you can see two loggias
with five arches each. On the first floor your eye will be arrested
by the figural ornamentation. The standing figures, from the left,
illustrate piety, justice, thrift and strength, while the reposing
figures represent peace, war, love, watchfulness and power. The
inscription bellow comes from Chapter 20 of the Book of Moses
John´s Book, Chapter 4 verse 16: "God is Love. Whoever lives
in love lives in God and God in him. In the year of 1573",
bearing the initials MM. Bases of columns on one of the loggias
bear the motifs of the head of a clown, a bull and a stag, and
there are several rosettes and letters IHS (Meaning Jesus hominum
Salvator - Jesus, the Saviour of Man). The third gallery was first
made from sandstone, and there used to be a moulding and allegorical
figures. However, as the walls had already been in poor condition,
it was pulled down and replaced with a wooden gallery at the beginning
of the 19th century. Soon after the house was completed in 1577,
Matěj Mydlář passed it on to his son Daniel. He is believed to
have had the characteristic minaret-like double tower built from
bricks and carved stone. The first tower rises five storeys high
and can be accessed by winding stairs. At the level above the
house it has hexagonal form and square windows. The other tower,
built on the east side of the house, exceeds the first tower and
its highest section is in the shape of a minaret with eight small
windows. It is hard to say when exactly the towers were built,
but we know for sure it was before the end of the 16th century.
There are no written records of why they were built. As from the
very beginning they had been called an "observatory",
it is generally believed that they also used to serve for watching
the stars. Matěj Mydlář knew renaissance style from his travels.
At the time, the architecture of Chrudim fell behind other towns
in Bohemia. That was why he wanted to build as magnificent a palace
as possible. Other wealthy citizens of Chrudim then tried to remodel
their houses and the town soon became quite spectacular. The last
owner of the house was Marie Kozlanská who legated it to the municipality
in 1952. Nowadays, Mydlář´s House is a public place - there are
permanent as well as temporary exhibitions, which are altered
annually. On special occasions, it is also possible to climb up
the tower. Soon after it was first opened, the museum annexed
the neighbouring building, house No. 73. Formerly a Gothic-style
building was remodelled into a renaissance house (probably in
1577), while its supports (corbels) had been preserved. It now
houses the museum offices and part of the depository. In 1990,
the museum bought the building on the other side of Mydlář´s House
- No. 75, which dates back to the 16th century. The two buildings
were interconnected to gain more exhibition area and to provide
space for other visitor-oriented activities. There was constructed
the lift for "without barriers" admission in the end
of year 2009. Welcome to visit us.
Art
gallery
The
gallery was opened in March 1995 when reconstruction of house
No. 75 had been completed. Since then, a number of short-term
exhibitions have been held there (6 to 7 a year), and these are
not always devoted to puppetry. The initial idea was to attract
more people and bring them more often to the museum by offering
them as varied display as possible. The first cycle included works
created by actors whose hobby is to paint. The museum also wants
to show its visitors creative arts devoted to children, toys and
works of art based on toying with fantasy, creative activities
of puppet stage designers, theatre-related photography, children's
art inspired by a given theme.... and much more.
Playroom
with puppets
The
motto of the room is "Please touch". This is to compensate
for our request (often futile) not to touch any exhibits in the
museum. Naturally, especially children, want to have a go. And
this place, the playroom, is where they can. The playroom was
set up with the help of stage designers from the Department of
Alternative and Puppet Theatre of the School of Dramatic Arts
(DAMU) in Prague. Students of one class had this task to solve
as their semester project. Then it was up to us to turn their
ideas into reality. The stages (one small stage for puppets and
one for marionettes) are the work of Jan Zich and the puppets
were made by Bára Zichova, his wife.
