One of the most colorful and decorative traces of the times of Austrian Lviv (Lemberg) can be found right under our feet — in the entrances, vestibules, and stairwells of many of Lviv’s buildings, from the floors of the finest banks and institutions to ordinary residential apartments in the city’s […]
Read More
One of the most successful businesses in Galicia was Bracia Mund, which was founded in 1898 in Lwów (Lviv). It was co-owned by three brothers Maurycy Mund (1869-~1943), Jakób Mund (1872-~1943), and Ignacy Mund (?-~1943). The company started off with a storefront at 23 Sykstuska Street (now Doroshenka), selling architectural […]
Barta & Tichý Praha was one of the most famous ceramic factories in Europe. Here is an example of their work which I found in Prague: This factory has a connection to Lviv, for in the 1880s the famous architect Jan Lewiński opened a store in Lviv where products from […]
My friend sent me pictures of these lovely antique tiles in Drohobych, which were made by Joachim Sternbach’s company, probably in the interwar period.
It’s farily common to find the dates of buildings carved into their facades, but occasionally the years of constructions were marked in other places, for example on the floor near the main entrance, such as can be seen in my posts about terrazzo or on tiles as seen below. This one […]
As I suspected, few doors were open or unlocked to Vienna’s residential buildings. Unlike Lviv, the vast majority of doors are in good condition and kept locked, usually with a key and not code. Therefore, I didn’t have the opportunity to see many entranceways. However, I lucked out and did […]
In Chernivtsi I saw a few tiles with the inscription “Leon Schrenzel Czernowitz.” Overall, I saw the name of only one company that manufactured tiles. Leon Schrenzel’s building materials company was founded in 1887 – a time when Chernivtsi would have been part of the Austrian Empire.
