Pisch Andreas (1 results)

Olmütz: R. Promberger, 1902. Folio (42.4 × 28.8 cm). Half cloth portfolio with mounted original cover title, housing 19, [1] pp. staple-stitched text booklet with illustrations and 45 lithographic plates (of which 12 chromolithographs and 27 monochrome plates). The portfolio toned, stained, and with light wear; text leaves with a few small marginal tears; the plates lightly toned at the edges; overall about very good. Rare lithographic pattern plate work on Moravian and Slovak ornaments, as traditionally used for clothing, Easter eggs, porcelain, and facade decoration. The teacher Andreas Pisch taught at a general education school in Kojetín (today Czechoslovakia), whose graduates eventually went on to vocational training in the trades or commerce. The portfolio was intended to help the teacher prepare his lessons. He wrote in the foreword: "The purpose of the work remains the same: the preservation of old national artistic monuments, which here and there are already crumbling, in some places carelessly destroyed and elsewhere again kept locked up in inaccessible barriers as privileged property and product of the owners' own spirit, and the dissemination of these ornaments in wider circles. By selecting only valuable samples, I endeavoured to create a collection suitable for school lessons, from which the schoolchild should learn to recognize the artistic value of the Slavs' domestic products and also to purify his taste with regard to Slavic culture. [.] This work, however, is not a school of drawing, but only a collection of models from which the teacher selects what seems suitable to him according to the ability of the pupils and includes it in his course, just as we are used to compiling our own course from the works that have been declared acceptable" (preface). However, Pisch did not limit himself to detaching the ornaments from their contexts in order to present them on their own. In his texts, he carried out a parallel counter-movement by describing in detail the cultural and liturgical uses of ornaments. For example, he explains which garments are worn and how at which marriage ceremony. He also discusses the pedagogical use of ornaments in the lessons. In addition, each ornament or plate is described individually in terms of shape, color, and cultural history. A much less extensive version of this work was published in 1901 with a slightly different title; hence the designation of this edition as the second. Not in Schneider-Henn or Lipperheide. As of April 2025, KVK, OCLC lists only one copy in North America.