Prague Decorative Arts Museum
Given the choice between fine arts and decorative arts, I will often choose the former. A Monet or a Bosch will please me any day of the week. However, having now visited the Prague Decorative Arts Museum, I have gained a new level of respect and appreciation for all that is decorative. Seeing a collection that demonstrates the heights of artistic beauty to which even the most humble functional item can be raised, I cannot help but be impressed.
Take for example, the lowly candy dish. Just about any old thing can be a candy dish. You could saw a coffee can in half and, voila! Candy dish. But here at the Decorative Arts Museum, I saw an item, which I am calling a candy dish simply because that is what it most reminds me of (it had a fancier title, but I neglected to take note of it).
White and Red Candy Dish
This was so lovely as to make me write an Ode to the Candy dish:
(Clears throat) – “In life I have one solemn wish, To own such a lovely candy dish…”
Oops, sorry. Anyway, getting back to the museum. Starting with the building, this is a monumental celebration of all that is decorative. Built in the late nineteenth century in Neo-Renaissance style, the structure is a more than capable partner to all the beauty it contains.
The wealth of artworks then made available are displayed in very creative ways. For example, all the kinds of cloth and paper are laid in drawers of large cabinets. Each cabinet is labeled, and there are chairs to sit on while you roll out each drawer of whatever category of printed matter, for example, that you might wish to explore. Here are two examples of things that caught my attention in the cabinets: an extraordinary piece of lace, and some examples of gorgeous illuminated manuscript letters.
Then in other rooms there were huge glass cabinets with hydraulic shelving. You could view what was presently at eye level, or you could press a button and bring a piece on another shelf way above your head down to where you could best see it. A very efficient way to make the largest number of pieces available.
And then there were more conventional glass cases full of items related to each other. Here is a collection of some other pieces in the museum’s permanent collection that caught my eye.
When we had explored the entire permanent collection, we descended to the ground floor of the museum and discovered there was a gallery to one side that housed temporary exhibits, in this case an exhibit of ceramic works by the important modern Czech ceramic artist Václav Šerák and his students, called “Fire Clay Ice.”
Fire Clay Ice Exhibit Poster
While there were many of Mr. Šerák’s works on display, documenting his long and varied career as a ceramicist –
Vaclav Serak’s Work
I personally found the works of his students to be much more appealing, especially the set of dishes by Jiří Laštovička.
Looking at these attractive dishes and teapots and other ceramic works was a delightful finish to our time at the Decorative Arts Museum.
The Museum is just west of Prague’s old Jewish quarter, Josefov, and we walked past the Jewish Museum on our way to lunch at George Prime Steak. I had heard that George’s serves amazing hamburgers, and since Therese’s mom Eileen loves hamburgers, I thought that would be a fun place for lunch. It is also an elegant restaurant, much fancier than many of the other restaurants we visited in Prague.
When we entered the restaurant, it seemed at first that the wait staff didn’t know what to do with us. But after conferring, they offered us a very nice table in the dining room. The menu were given didn’t have any hamburgers listed, but when I asked about that, they brought us a separate hamburger/bar menu. Unfortunately for me, the hamburgers could not be prepared dairy free (I think it was the bun that had some butter in it). So I opted for a small filet mignon with a port wine sauce and frites (with house-made ketchup), accompanied by a nice local golden ale, Pivovar Matuska.
Eileen did end up ordering one of the hamburgers – in fact, it was the variety that I expected her to order, one with sautéed mushrooms and blue cheese.
Since we were attending the opera that evening, a performance that began at what was to us the early hour of 7pm, our lunch at George’s was our main meal of the day. We took our afternoon break after lunch, and then had light snacks in our hotel executive lounge before taking the metro to Wenceslas Square and then walking just one block to the State Opera House.
State Opera House Prague
The interior of the State Opera House is very beautiful, and the auditorium is quite intimate, compared to what I am used to (New York City’s Metropolitan Opera House, where we usually attend opera performances, is enormous).
The size of the auditorium was just perfect for the performance we attended. Soprano Eva Hornyakova was making her Prague debut as the title character of Verdi’s La Traviata. Listening to her sing from the first row of the balcony, I felt like that I could easily hear every nuance of her performance and that of the entire company. It was such a privilege to go to the opera in Prague, and the perfect end to another wonderful day of our Prague holiday.
The post Prague Decorative Arts Museum appeared first on The Dairy Free Traveler.