Arms & Armor

Overview

From the late Renaissance until the land reforms of the 20th century, the great estates of Bohemia and Moravia, with their vast forests and parkland, provided some of the best hunting in Europe. This was not an idle passion; hunting was very often the best way a young prince or nobleman could gain the kind of training he needed for warfare. The chase was a privilege of those who not only owned large amounts of land but who could also afford to dedicate these lands to sport. The additional expense of employing falconers, gamekeepers and foresters, as well as maintaining stables, kennels and gunrooms only added to the exclusivity of hunting – and to its allure.

These hunting landowners were great conservationists and environmentalists before the words were in use, because without a diverse habitat, the animals that they hunted would not have survived. They planted millions of hardwood trees at great expense, which provided shelter for deer, wild boar and other game. Without a habitat there would be no game to pursue and much of the European wooded landscape, with stately mature trees now hundreds of years old, is a direct result of this early hunting. The Lobkowiczes were no exception to this trend. All of the major Lobkowicz properties served as venues for the hunt.

Highlights of the Arms Collection

Bearing witness to these hunting parties and their participants are hundreds of mounted trophies in The Lobkowicz Collections that date from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. The social aspects of the hunt are also reflected in the many paintings and graphics by local artists in the collection, among them pictures of favorite horses, dogs and trophies. The most potent totems of the hunt, however, are the firearms themselves. After being in storage for many years, some of the finest are now on display in two armory rooms at Lobkowicz Palace at Prague Castle, while others from the collection are on view at Nelahozeves Castle.

The majority of these rifles and pistols were produced locally for the family between 1650 and 1750 – the high point of Central European firearms production. The 17th-century Prague workshops of Adam Brand, Paul Ignatius Poser, the Neireiter family and Leopold Becher produced many of these firearms, as did Roudnice craftsmen such as Johannes Lackner and Adel Friedrich during the mid-18th century. They are a lasting tribute to the patronage of the Lobkowicz family, who provided the gun makers with large orders for guns throughout the centuries.

A very special feature of the private collection is a group of identical flintlock rifles produced for the Lobkowicz Militia in the 18th century, probably one of the largest of its kind in existence. Additional weapons came from Silesia, while the most elaborate 18th-century rifles and pistols (some in the Turkish manner) with mother-of-pearl inlay were produced in Vienna. Goldsmiths and silversmiths specializing in inlay were employed to decorate guns, rifles, crossbows and powder flasks of the finest quality. It is perhaps the renowned skill of the steel chisellers and engravers who, working from pattern books, have left behind a legacy of decorated actions of unsurpassed quality.

These firearms represent the marriage between power and art more clearly than any other part of The Collections, for what were conceived as instruments of war and conquest have become artworks to be admired. Today, long since the last of these guns were fired, they stand as objects of beauty and vestiges of the Lobkowicz family’s storied past.