A large number of historically valuable pieces of liturgical vestments have been preserved in the collections of the parishes of the Brno diocese. A project of Masaryk University in cooperation with the Diocesan Museum, supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, conducted field research on these fabrics and selected the rarest exhibits for the upcoming exhibition. The surviving liturgical garments are a testament to the tremendous inventiveness and creative freedom of 17th and 18th century textile designers, whose free handling of the rules of perspective or disregard for the laws of nature anticipated similar developments in painting by centuries.
Visitors to the exhibition will see rare textiles not only from Indian, Persian, French and Italian weaving workshops, but also textile designs from Southeast Asia. The exhibition will also present the development and changes in the styles of textile patterns in their chronology, which was quite different from the development of works of art in sculpture, painting and architecture, and is not well known to the general public. Individual weaving techniques and the different visual impact of different types of fabrics will also be presented.
One of the aims of the project was to recall the beauty and richness of historical designs and at the same time to develop their application potential even today. Historic fabric patterns are one form of cultural capital that can be reused. That is why the Kolovrat, ČM s.r.o. company, which created replicas of selected historical fabrics, and students of Fashion and Textile Design at the Higher Vocational School in Brno, who used the replicas of historical fabrics to design garments in a contemporary style, collaborated on the project. Visitors will be able to see how this meeting of 18th and 21st century creativity turned out in the last section of the exhibition. The exhibition installation and graphic design were created by students and teachers of the Faculty of Architecture at Brno University of Technology. The exhibition will take place simultaneously in the Diocesan Museum in Petrov and in the Mendel Museum from 18 May to 2 June.
The project also includes a website
www.beauty-patterns.org/, where all the surviving designs can be viewed in reconstructed form.
Exhibition theme and scenario: František Svoboda a Jiří Vácha /Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University /
Architectural and artistic representation of the exhibition: Nicol Gale, Tuan Anh Tran, Ondřej Bradávka, Klarisa Ach-Hübner, Adéla Vepřková, Drahomíra Dubinská /Faculty of Architecture BUT in Brno/
Graphic collaboration: Nikola Poláčková, Žaneta Pevná, Natálie Polesová
Realization of the exhibition: Vladimír Vancl, Martin Surmař, Martin Králík, Petr Kalouda with students of Střední škola umění a designu a Vyšší odborná škola Brno, and students of Faculty of Architecture BUT
Collaboration: Diecézní muzeum, Konzervátorské centrum Biskupství brněnského, Diecézní archiv Biskupství brněnského, Kolovrat ČM, s r.o.
Exponáty zapůjčili: ŘKF Telč, ŘKF u kostela sv. Václava, Mikulov, ŘKF Velká Bíteš, ŘKF u kostela sv. Kříže, Znojmo, ŘKF Vranov u Brna, ŘKF Znojmo-Louka, ŘKF Opatov na Moravě, ŘKF Letovice, ŘKF Radkovice u Hrotovic, ŘKF Oslavany, ŘKF Slavonice, ŘKF Sloup v Moravském krasu, ŘKF Moravský Krumlov, ŘKF u kostela sv. Tomáše, Brno, ŘKF Myslibořice, ŘKF Jaroměřice nad Rokytnou
Special thanks: Petra Žalmanová, Adam Ach-Hübner, Ivana Masníková, Rudolf Žilík
Thanks are also due to the clerical administrators of the parishes of the Diocese of Brno who enabled and supported the field research of liturgical fabrics stored in individual parishes.
This project is co-financed with the state support of the Czech Technology Agency within the programme Éta - TL03000126 – Opětovné zhodnocování kulturního kapitálu ve výrobě a podpora jeho prezentace.