Albums

Old Gmunden Faience

During the period between the museum's foundation and the end of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the museum consistently acquired Gmunden objects. In an era of increasing industrial production, museums collected handcrafted objects in order to save them from disappearing and being forgotten. Every now and then, extensive collections from private individuals would also find their way into the museum’s collection. The majority of today's holdings of around 350 objects had already been catalogued by 1918.

Acquisition activity continued on a smaller scale from then on, with holdings from the period between 1938 and 1945 now being investigated by restitution research. Hardly any major new acquisitions were made after that, apart from some green-flamed bowls from a private collection, which were purchased in 2005.

Right From the Start – The First 1,000 Positives of the Photo Collection

The origins and early history of the photo collection are best and most impressively shown when we look at positive inventory numbers pos/1 to pos/1000 (see Hammer 2020). The photographs in this collection were acquired in the first ten years after the museum was founded, i.e. between 1895 and 1905.

Collecting these photographs was important to the museum from the very beginning. After all, photographs were seen as witnesses to a ‘disappearing’ culture as well as a medium for depicting or ‘collecting’ what was intangible or too bulky for the collections (see Haberlandt 1896), e.g. small monuments or houses.

Recently digitised