The article deals with the forms of the adaption of vernacular buildings situated in the upper part of the Ore Mountains to cold
climate. Unfavourable climatic conditions in the mountainous areas were a significantly restricting factor, especially in terms of agriculture and permanent settlement. The Ore Mountains folk house is a result of the century-long adaptation to cold climate, and as such it includes a set of purposeful measures. These could be seen in the layout and construction of the house (a compact house with integrated shed, specific forms of roof) and materials used
(boarding or shingle-panelling to protect gables and half-timbered
walls, shingle or thatch roofs). Different architectural elements, which were conditioned by the local climate and were typical for the
traditional architecture in the Ore Mountains, developed there (wind
porch, bay toilet, another entrance on the second floor).
The efforts and results of the research work of the 19th-century personalities who prepared the Czechoslavic Ethnographic Exhibition was continued by other scientists from ethnography and other disciplines dealing with folk culture in the 20th century. Dušan Jurkovič, Zdeněk Wirth and Václav Mencl as well as others were among the most significant experts in the branch of vernacular architecture. Antonín Kurial, a student of Prof. Groha and a university teacher, followed their traces and learned from their results. He succeeded in developing the theories about the documentation of vernacular architecture into a fully- fledged practice. Together with his students at Brno University of Technology, he tried to achieve the best possible way of documentation. After World War II, he started to make an inventory of and to localize more than 1 300 buildings and to survey the selected vernacular buildings from Moravia and Silesia in the measuring scale 1:50 and 1:25. Eastern Moravia, especially the regions of Luhačovské Zálesí and southern Wallachia as well as the villages with timbered architecture in the Vsetín area are abundantly represented in his collection prepared for the Atlas of Vernacular Architecture. The collected documents are published in the form of a printed Catalogue of Vernacular Architecture in particular districts and they are considered to be a unique form of detailed documentation of vernacular buildings in Central Europe.
The text summarizes the history and present state of the ethnocartographic research in the Czech Lands. It accentuates the fact that, in spite of the relatively high prestige of ethnocartography in many European countries and in spite of repeated efforts of several representants of our ethnocartography, „classical“ ethnographic atlas was never realized in the Czech Republic and probably will never be realized in the future due to several reasons. The causes of neglect or even negation of ethnocartographic research are mostly due to organizational and ideological reasons. The present-day Czech research must, therefore, face numerous specific tasks and problems that influence the concept and contents of the ethnographic atlas. From the nowadays already anachronistic effort to map the „whole“ of traditional culture the concept of the Ethnographic Atlas of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia moved in the direction of spatial documentation and analysis of partial, selected aspects. The second important feature is the giving up of field research and the general use of questionnaires in the process of the collection of the data, instead of the analysis of written and iconographical sources. The basic conceptual and theoretical-methodological bases of the work on the atlas can be resumed as follows: the consistent application of territorial, not ethnical principle for collection and analysis of the data; the focus on the time period between the second half of the 18th century and the beginning of the 20th century; liberal choice of localities, preference given to statistical and proto-statistical data; consistent application of modern technological devices – especially geographic information system (GIS).
In the submitted reflection essay, I contemplate the rural environment in the region of Moravian Záhoří from the point of view of an ethnologist. The significant value of this regions concerns the landscape character of this agricultural region in a low hilly area adjacent to the western Carpathians and only rarely disturbed by modern industrial elements. The natural communication network with a plethora of small sacral monuments interconnects the individual villages, which have not undergone an essential development. If new residential districts are built at the outskirts
of the villages, at least the village core preserves some traditional values. In most locations in the region we can perceive the surviving urbanism of village greens and neighbouring farmsteads which have kept their volume corresponding to the first half of the 20th century. The farmsteads built from fired materials in large dimensions suffice without significant changes even today and they even exceed spatial demands in some cases. Therefore some parts of houses remain lifeless whereby the use of farm wings and buildings themselves seems to be a big problem. We encounter surviving architectural details of facades only in a few cases because these were wiped by younger reconstructions, or covered by modern layers. In spite of all modernization steps which were made during the 20th century and which continue at present as well, we can consider the region of Moravian Záhoří to be an exceptional region with preserved landscape and urban elements, which would be worthy a bigger tourist but especially professional interest of different disciplines. The primary precondition in this context is to find a relation to positive values surviving from the past on the side of inhabitants and representatives of particular villages.
Die Entwicklung des Volksbauwesens im jugoslawischen Banat, wo seit dem Ende der dreissiger Jahre des 19. Jahrhunderts eine kleine tschechische Sprachinsel mit heute mehr als 2500 Einwohnern liegt, stand vor allem unter dem Einfluss der planmässigen Gründung von Dörfern für die Kolonisten und die nicht allzu zahlreiche einheimische Bevölkerung seit der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Die damals von der österreichisch-ungarischen Zivil- und Militärbehörden verwirklichte urbanistische Absicht wurde im Verein mit den geographischen Bedingungen zum integrierenden Faktor der dortigen Siedlungen. Die Differenzierungsmerkmale zwischen dem tschechischen (ähnlich auch dem slowakischen und deutschen) Kolonistenhaus und der Behausung der einheimischen Bevölkerung äusserten sich - wie der Autor in seiner Arbeit erläuterte - eher in Details, die durch den Akkulturationsprozess seit dem ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert allmählich verschwanden. Zu diesen Differenzierungsmerkmalen gehörte, abgesehen von einer im allgemeinen grösseren ästhetischen Gestaltung und einem besseren Aussehen der Kolonistengehöfte und -interieurs, sowie einer intensiveren Wirtschaftsart, hauptsächlich in Beibehaltung der Innenkommunikation zwischen der beim Eingang gelegenen Küche und der beiden Stuben. Andererseits übernahmen die tschechischen Kolonisten von der einheimischen Bevölkerung Vorlauben und einige Wirtschaftsgebäude (z. B. "hambár" - Speicher), was mit dem Maisanbau in Verbindung stand. Gegenwärtig gibt es mit Ausnahme der Hausterminologie im wesentlichen keinen Unterschied zwischen dem tschechischen und dem serbischen Haus, sofern allerdings die älteren Haustypen nicht noch bis heute einige traditionelle, ethnisch bedingte Bauelemente beibehalten. and Článek zahrnuje poznámkový aparát a 21 fotografií
Models of vernacular architecture are one of the best ways for the documentation of folk buildings. However, it is necessary to be aware of the fact that those models document the buildings visually, while their construction and material are documented only insufficiently. The research on the models showed that the models are made at more quality levels which differ in the fidelity of imitation of a constructional detail or material used. Even though the models will continue to be a suitable means to document vernacular architecture, it is necessary to replenish them with other documentation methods. The future of the models consists primarily in the presentation of folk buildings.
The text deals with models of vernacular architecture in collections of the Přelouč City Museum. The models were made by Antonín Pleskot (1909-1980), a native from Přelouč and a today less known author of vernacular architecture ́s models, in connection with the Přelouč Ethnographic Exhibition (1893) at the turn of the 20th century. The contribution also summaries his production. Pleskot produced historical and ethnographic models of different buildings for national heritage institutions and different museums throughout the then Czechoslovakia. His works were exhibited, among other places, in the National Museums in Prague and Bratislava, in the Moravian Museum in Brno, the Silesian Museum in Opava, the South-Bohemian Museum in České Budějovice and in Nitra.Pleskot was a member of the Marold Association of Fine Artists and took part in several exhibitions, including the Exhibition of Folk Art at the
Hybernians´ Palace in Prague in 1953.