Bohemian garnets exhibit makes only U.S. stop in Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS — Seldom do peasants and royalty have the same gemstones at their fingertips. But in the history of the Czech Republic, garnets were equally at home in cottages and castles.

A rare opportunity to see the scope of Bohemian garnets through the years opens Saturday, June 17, and continues through Jan. 14 at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in Cedar Rapids.

It’s the only place in America where the exhibition will be on view, and once it closes, the pieces will be placed on permanent display at the National Museum in Prague.

“I saw it as a really rare opportunity to show the world of the Bohemian garnets,” said Lucie Kodisova, curator of the exhibit from the Prague museum.

“It’s a blockbuster, because garnets are so special to Czech and Slovak Americans,” added Stefanie Kohn, curator at the Cedar Rapids museum.

Heirlooms

“A lot of people have garnets in their family. They’ve passed down their beautiful garnet jewelry. Some people brought it with them when they came. When they immigrated, they definitely brought their garnets with them. So it's a very important part of their heritage, I would say. And everybody just loves to see the pretty things,” Kohn said.

“We're just so excited because we had a beautiful garnet exhibit from the National Museum in 2005. And ever since 2006, we've had people saying, ‘When will you have the garnets back?’ So finally in 2023, we’re working with the National Museum again to have the garnets.”

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But this exhibit differs in scope from the pieces on view in 2005. In addition to displaying the deep red gemstones, this array also looks at garnet mining and cutting. And it shows the gems were used not only in jewelry, but also in such household items as goblets; knives, forks and spoons; medals; picture frames; and portraits in which the subjects are wearing garnet jewelry.

Video components on mining, stone cutting and jewelry-making will enhance the experience for viewers, as well.

The 2005 exhibit “didn’t have anything on mining or cutting. It was all just garnets. It was very beautiful,” Kohn said, estimating it to be in the top three most popular exhibits the Cedar Rapids museum has mounted.

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However, garnets have lost a bit of their luster in their homeland.

“In Czech Republic, almost everybody has some garnets at home,” Kodisova said, “but we don't wear them a lot, because people don't appreciate them. They also think that it's a little bit old-fashioned.”

Craftsmanship

The back story is what intrigues curator Kodisova.

“(When) you dig into the topic, you can see how rare the craftsmanship behind all these jewelry pieces is,” she said. “And that's what I probably cherish the most, because even the mining of Bohemian garnets was really dangerous.

“It used to be kind of seasonal work for peasants. You can find garnets on the field, on the top after rain, so you can just pick them up. That's the easiest way how to collect Bohemian garnets. They also (dug) holes sometimes, because the black soil was extremely important for the agriculture, so they didn't want to destroy it.”

The holes didn’t have support structures, however, making the mining process very dangerous.

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The other aspect that intrigues Kodisova is that “some of the most beautiful jewelry pieces are made from really tiny, tiny, tiny stones. Some of them wouldn't be even mined nowadays — not even worth the cutting. The labor was cheap, they (cut the stones) at home during evenings in winter. It’s just a lot of work. …

“That’s what makes the so-called boring jewelry really interesting to me,” she said, pointing out that the pieces with the tiniest stones are monochromatic, “but they were able to show a difference in textures using different cuts of the stone.”

Photos of birds, butterflies, flowers and other scenes from the natural world are included in the exhibit to show how Czech nature influenced jewelry designs, Kodisova noted.

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The jewelry is “quite appropriate for daily wearing,” she added, since garnets can score more than 7 out of 10 points on the gemstone hardness scale. They also are non-flammable, so “fire will not destroy it.”

And not all garnets are deep red. One exhibit case shows the wide range of colors, from bright green, orange and black to gold, pink and peach. The colorful stones are mined around the world, from South America and South Africa to India, China and the United States.

The Museum Store at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library keeps a variety of garnet items for sale, and a new shipment will increase those offerings during the exhibition.

Putting it together

Kodisova and Adela Skoupa from the National Museum’s collection care department have been in Cedar Rapids for just two weeks, so much of the U.S.-Czech collaboration has been coordinated from afar.

“Lucie and her team were told the different (spaces) in which artifacts would go in each section,” Kohn said. “And so then based on that, we tried to imagine how many cases we might need. But it's very flowing and organic, because once we see the items, we've already changed some cases, like gotten a smaller one or a bigger one or moved some things around, just because you have to kind of be in the space.

“So it is a little challenging when you have two teams on either side of the Atlantic, trying to make the exhibit come together. We know our space and our cases, and they know the subject matter and their collection, and then trying to get it to come together.

“It's worked out great,” Kohn said, “because we luckily have a lot of different size cases and we can move things around within our floor plan. So that's been working out fine.”

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It hasn’t been all work and no play for the Czech guests, who will return home Saturday afternoon, following Kodisova’s 10 a.m. guided tour of the exhibit. In their short stay, they’ve done some shopping and squeezed in a trip to Effigy Mounds in northeast Iowa.

Skoupa found Iowa to be “exciting — the museum, people, food, nature — everything.” She loved the way the geese came out of the water and cars stopped to let them cross the streets.

That resonated with Kodisova, too, who said: “The other thing we like in the United States is that all drivers are really calm, polite.”

And then the Iowans laughed.

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com