The oldest items from Central Asia we given to the Museum by Natalya Petrovna before 1863 and František Krátký. However, the Náprstek Museum actually received them only in 1921, together with an extensive collection of the so-called “foreign ethnography” from the Land Museum (now the National Museum). The earliest collections included objects from Julius Zeyer. Julius Zeyer (1841 – 1901), a wellknown Czech prose writer, playwright and poet, was among the close friends of the Náprsteks. He traveled to many countries and worked as a tutor and companion in several aristocratic families in Russia (1873 and 1880 – 1881). Julius Zeyer enriched the Central Asian collection with three items. After returning from Russia, he handed over to the Museum a pair of shoes, and towards the end of his life (in 1899) – Bukhara embroidery suzani and prayer rug joynamaz.
In 1883, the Museum received a set of twenty four items from Emanuel Meergans, an engineer who worked in Russia. Mainly, these were items from the Uzbek city of Margilan: silver jewelry, clothes and shoes, writing implements, bookmarks and wallets. In 1887, several items were presented to the Museum by the engineer M. Škorpil (1856 – 1931), who worked at Mary. These were a hat, a tobacco box made of gourd and a hookah whose lower part – a water tank made of gourd fitted in a brass case – has been preserved in the collection.
Václav Kračmer, a grammar school teacher working for the Russians in Verny, donated objects to the collection in 1891 and again in 1902. This was a money-bag originating from Tashkent, and earrings made in Samarkand. In 1902, V. Kračmer transferred a number of other items to the Náprstek Museum, including silver earrings, embroidered shoes and a fragment of embroidery on velvet. In 1892, Josef Seifert, professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, donated two musical instruments to the Museum, including two nagora drums from Tashkent. Later, one doira tambourine was acquired by the Museum.
You can learn more about the topic in the book-album "The Collection of the Czech Republic" (Volume XVI) in the series "Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in the World Collections".
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