Jitka Sedlářová
Salm’s English Dream and Förster’s Experiment with Cast-Iron Houses
Altgraf (Count) Hugo Salm began in 1823, building on his own experience with prefabricated cast-iron components used in England, to prepare the production of these goods in his ironworks. He selected the architect Heinrich Koch as his colleague; he described to him what cast-iron products were used at a construction (‘…window frames, zinc-coated truss’) and added that he was dreaming about building such a house in Vienna, because this enterprise provided him with more entertainment than casting bridges, in which the director of his ironworks, Reichenbach, was interested. Nevertheless, he contacted the renowned bridge-construction builder Friedrich Schnirch in March of the next year and asked him to build, following the model of the famous bridge in Stra?Lžnice (Strassnitz), such constructions on three selected sites, one of them across the Punkva in the beautiful Arnošt Valley (Ernstthal) or near Rájec nad Svitavou (Raitz an der Zwittawa). This plan was cancelled, but the count did not entirely abandon his ideas and put Schnirch in charge of a project for the construction of a sheepcote, because ‘iron roofs might once become attractive’. At the beginning of May 1825, he offered cooperation to the governor Count Hartig during the construction of a newly built theatre according to the project of Peter Nobile. After a short cooperation with Heinrich Koch, Salm selected the architect Ludwig Förster as the head of the Blansko art workshop. From the middle of September 1829 until the end of 1830, Fo?Nrster supplied the shift foreman of the Marian Ironworks Johannes Brandt with wooden models for Ionic and Doric cornices for the houses of Mr Blumauer and Mayer. The individual castings were however too heavy and the entire company, which was supposed to be a monumental contribution of Blansko to the industrial revolution of the Austrian Monarchy, went bankrupt. Förster then followed the idea of a cast-iron cornice through at Klein’s Palace in Brno (1847–1848).
Key words: Bohemian Lands, Austrian
design by Bedřich Vémola
