kafel-kar

Rogalin Palace – reconstruction of tile stoves

Rogalin Palace – reconstruction of thirteen tile stoves.

          The reconstruction was carried out in 2014 by Kafel-Kar and based on the mentioned project, archival photography and dozens of rescued tiles. The rescued original tiles have been put in stove bodies after conservation as “witnesses”. However only “insiders” are able to find them which reflects a high-class reconstruction.
Please be invited to visit the Rogalin Palace Museum, the former seat of the Raczyński noble family, one of the most valuable residences in Poland. It was built in the 70-ties of the 18th century for Kazimierz Raczyński, great district governor of Greater Poland and Grand Marshall of the Crown, later it has undergone a partial modernisation with the classicist rules, and in the Romantic period enriched by his grand son, Edward by a neo-gothic armoury in the former ballroom, oval library in the place of palace chapel and landscape park with church-mausoleum. At the end of the 19th century with Edward Aleksander Raczyński and Róża Raczyńska nee Potocka the palace has undergone a general renovation, and in the former banquet hall a neo-rococo library was established. Also they made an excellent collection of contemporary Polish and foreign painting acquired by Edward Alexander available to the public in a specially constructed building of the Rogalin gallery dated 1910.
During the Second World War the Palace housed Hitlerjugend School, and in 1948 became department of the National Museum in Poznań. The post-war arrangement was far from interiors established by the former owners. Any changes became possible only after the transformation in Poland. In 1999 in the northern wing of the Palace, the London Cabinet – a true copy of the room of Edward Raczyński, President of the Republic of Poland in Exile in his apartment in London, was made available. As the last son of the Rogalin family, in 1990 he created The Raczyński Foundation at the National Museum in Poznań. Its main purpose it to preserve and make available works of art and other collections of the Raczyński family and the palace complex in Rogalin to the Polish public. Among them, collection of paintings of his father, Edward Aleksander, recovered by the Foundation can be found. As before the break of war, it still finds its place on the Rogalin gallery wall.
After a long-year, recently completed reconstruction of the residence, also historic interiors of the main part of the palace and its left wing were rebuilt. They convey the mood of the Rogalin house along with original and reconstructed equipment which has become abundant since the 18th century up until the times of Roger Adam Raczyński, Poznań Voivode and Ambassador of the Republic of Poland in Romania, the last pre-war owner of the family residence.
A very important element influencing the nature of the palace interiors, were stoves which were removed after the Raczyński family has left Rogalin. As a result of recent works, eighteen stoves were returned in place. Four of them, almost complete, have undergone conservation, and the other fourteen have been reconstructed based on archival photography and tile remnants. Among them was the largest and the most impressive stove from neo-rococo library. It was designed along with all the interior in 1894 by a newcomer architect from Cracow, Zygmunt Hendl, and accomplished under his supervision in one of the Dresden’s workshops (Königsbrücker Chamotte-Ofen u.Thonwaren-Fabrik ?).