Factory

An accompanying publication to the exhibition Brno — the Moravian Manchester
Brno was once called the Moravian Manchester in the days of its greatest glory. Fabrics from the local textile mills flooded literally the entire world, and the tumultuous industrial boom in the 19th century transformed the city into a confident and modern centre. The famous villas, railway station, streets and parks, and even the Brno dialect known as Hantec, all emerged in connection with the development of the textile industry. However, the downside of this boom included strikes by impoverished workers, social problems, and orphanages full of children working from dawn till dusk in the dust and roar of the weaving machines.
Kateřina Tučková's book Fabrika tells the story of five generations of the family of Johann Heinrich Offermann, who came to Brno in 1776 as a poor wool expert. Soon after, however, he founded a manufactory and became one of the most important textile barons. This gripping account of family history also reflects the entire 250-year past of the Moravian Manchester. The book is supplemented with expert entries and photographic material from Brno's archives, making it a perfect guide to the now-defunct textile industry of Brno. The publication is released on the occasion of the exhibition Brno — the Moravian Manchester, held at the turn of 2014 and 2015 in the Moravian Gallery in Brno.
The authors of the expert entries in the publication are Mgr. Andrea Březinová (1973), a graduate of Art History and Museology at Masaryk University in Brno, and Mgr. Tomáš Zapletal (1977), a graduate of Art History and History at the same university. A. Březinová currently works as the curator of the textile and fashion collection, and T. Zapletal as an archivist at the Moravian Gallery in Brno, for which they prepared the exhibition project Brno — the Moravian Manchester.