Ornament v kachlovém reliéfu středověkoho a raně novověkého Brna

Ornamentation in tile reliefs is a broad although somewhat marginalised subject, the information potential of which appears lower than that of the iconography of religious, heraldic and genre motifs. In the royal city of Brno, visual expressions of the material culture may be observed in the interiors created by various social strata. In the second half of the 14th century and the first quarter of the 15th century, the dominant part was played by the castle; another culmination period occurred in the mid–15th century. In the inner city, tiles from the castle can be compared with those from the margrave's residence as well as with tiles from a large number of aristocratic dwellings and the houses of Brno burghers. This tile production can be also compared with finds from mendicant monasteries within the town walls, the Petrov chapter and the nearby episcopal residence. The era of tiled stoves in Brno becomes interesting, in terms of ornamentation, immediately after the mid–15th century, under the influence of Buda workshops. The mass spread of tiled stoves, with the frequent use of domestic motifs on the tiles, involved all social strata. Relief decoration did not dictate the price of expensive tile stoves; rather, high prices were charged for multicoloured (majolica) glazing. The second wave of imported ornamentation probably started before the mid–16th centaury. It was associated with the Anabaptists and endured until the end of their Moravian activities, in the early 1620's. These products spawned a large number of domestic imitations for all the social strata. This contribution is a cross-section of tile reliefs with purely ornamental subjects from the environment of the medieval and early modern-age royal city. It divides the material into two large groups, vegetal and geometrical, with a number of sub-categories based upon specific patterns. The article also discusses imported influences on domestic tile output.