Mööblikogu kui raam muuseumikollektsioonidele. Furniture collection - a frame for museum collections
Creators: name: Kriis, Leili
Publisher: name: Tartu Ülikooli ajaloo küsimusi
Year: 2019

description: The furniture collection of the University of Tartu museum comprises over 600 museum pieces. In addition to that, the museum manages the cultural assets of the university, which also include some furniture, and maintains a database of it. When the Tartu State University History Museum was founded in 1976, large-scale renovations started in the university buildings, which led to a collection of older furniture accumulating in the museum. The furniture collection has some historic interior design elements from the faculties, auditoriums, laboratories, offices, the assembly hall and library, which date back to the 19th and 20th century. The collection has grown more than anticipated and is bigger than the space at the museum allows. This has been inevitable for several reasons: elements of furniture reflect their era, describe contemporary academic lifestyle and work procedure. In comparison to other Estonian museums, the furniture collection of the University of Tartu Museum stands out for its university-specific elements, such as large cupboard-desks, cabinets with drawers and chests of drawers characteristic of laboratories. The historic collection cabinets, some of which came to the museum with collections such as Johann Friedrich Erdmann’s (1778–1846) pharmacological collection, Carl Schmidt’s (1822–1894) rock collection, and Johann Georg Dragendorff’s (1836– 1898) pharmacy collection provide us a sense of the older history of the university. The museum has a varied collection of seat furniture (including lectern armchairs, stools from laboratories and chairs from auditoriums, dating back to the early 19th century). The pieces of historical office furniture are connected to many well-known lecturers and professors of the University of Tartu, such as a physicist Artur von Oettingen (1836–1920), medics August Rauber (1841–1917), Ludvig Puusepp (1878–1942) and Albert Valdes (1884–1971), philologist and poet Gustav Suits (1883–1956), and others. The rooms of the old university library in the Dome Church, especially the Morgenstern hall, are decorated with historic furniture; cabinets brought in with curator Friedrich Maximilian Klinger (1752–1831) in the 19th century, book repositories designed and built by the university architect Johann Wilhelm Krause (1757–1828), the personal book cabinet and desk of the library’s long-time director Karl Morgenstern (1770–1852), and empire style armchairs with replicas of antique bust sculptures. We know little about the makers of the university’s furniture. Local masters (Roger, Maibaum and others) are mentioned in the inventory books of the 19th century, but often the carpenters have remained anonymous. Factory furniture prevailed at the turn of the century and in the first half of the 20th century; products of Thonet, A. M. Luther and others were the most popular. The Tartu Industrial School often made practical pieces of furniture for the university as well, offering their products for a lower price. These pieces of furniture are irreplaceable in displaying the university’s historic interiors. The museum uses the historic pieces to store as well as present its collections, which makes the university’s historic furniture a sort of a frame to the museum collections.
description: Tartu Ülikooli ajaloo küsimusi, No 47 (2019): Kas me sellist rahvusülikooli tahtsime?