As you already know, there is almost no original furniture left at the chateau. The Renaissance stove from 16th century is one of the few treasures that we are proud of.
The stove is composed of different shaped tiles, which are broken to pieces now. There is a small door in the wall that allowed servants to feed the fire from the adjoining room, which was once a hallway or balcony. The stove is still connected to the chimney; however, the chimney was partially torn down, and now ends somewhere beneath the roof.
Many years ago, someone took the time to put together all the pieces of the tiles and rebuild the stove to its original beauty. But a mistake was made, and the restorer built the stove on a brick base, which makes it look like a cottage stove. This base does not belong to a Renaissance stove….We thought for a long time that it was refurbished during the Communist period, but it was rebuilt much earlier, probably at the beginning of the 20th century. We also found a newspaper from 1911 inside.
The last owner from the Schreiner family, George, was a big history lover and it was most likely he who renovated the stove. Not only did he conduct his own historical research, but he confused the current historian by making historic renovations to the chateau.
Nevertheless, we are very grateful that this rarity survived, and we are looking forward to continuing with the repair. One big question, though, is what to do with the base.
What type of legs did the stove have? Were there any? If there were it would be hard if not impossible to restore them.
We once saw a beautiful Renaissance stove in a museum in Philadelphia with metal legs, but nobody will sell us those. If our stove stood on legs, it would most likely have been ceramic legs. To get those would be even harder.
During the summer tours we did a little survey among our visitors. We asked if any of them happened to be a professional ceramic stove builder. Once, a visitor offered to draw the this type of legs on the base. He was an academic artist 😀 🎨 . Well, it wouldn’t be the only allusive painting and curiosity we would have at the chateau. We are probably not going to take him up the offer, however, since we found what was there originally!
It was another visitor who discovered it. He came, looked carefully at the pieces we found during the cleanup, pieces evidently missed by George Schreiner, and identified the ones that belonged to the base. It is therefore likely that the tiles were all the way to the ground.
Don’t worry, we will work with professionals when we will get around to the restoration of the stove. We were already given a recommendation for a company that does such work. The reconstruction, however, will happen only if there will be any tiles left.
Unfortunately, even at our chateau, we have had visitors who like to collect souvenirs. We no longer have a beautiful center tile. At the very least, we hope that is on display somewhere and not in the trash….