CAST IRON

is an iron-carbon alloy (with other elements) that has a carbon content of at least 2.14%; due to its hardness and fragility, it is not suited to forming and shaping. Cast iron can be divided into two basic types according to how it was processed and the resulting quality – grey and white cast iron. In the nineteenth century, grey iron was used to produce household, artistic, and decorative cast iron pieces due to its melting and moulding properties (fluidity or ability to fill mould cavities) and properties during use (tensile strength, hardness, higher corrosion resistance) as well as due to its low cost.

Cast iron was processed in ancient China during the first millennium BCE. Europeans first started shaping cast iron only after the indirect reduction process was introduced in the late fourteenth century, when the high-carbon iron (3–4% carbon content) had to be remelted at a finery forge or the liquid metal could be directly used in casts.

Bohemia’s first coal-fired blast furnace was built in 1596 in Karlshütten (Karlova Huť), which is now part of the town of Králův Dvůr near Beroun. Originally, the objects produced from cast iron were farming tools, cannonballs and cannon barrels, small utilitarian objects such as pots, cauldrons, and racks, as well as cookplates and firebacks. With technical advances and the advent of industrialisation in the eighteenth and especially the nineteenth centuries, its use expanded to other areas. The popularity of cast iron led to its use in structural supports for buildings, factory halls, and bridges. One example of a cast-iron bridge near Pilsen is located by the Kozel hunting chateau and was probably produced by the foundry in Sedlec.

The production of artistic and decorative cast iron pieces, which foundries tended to consider a secondary product, peaked in the nineteenth century. In addition to structural supports, cast iron was also applied in interiors as small fittings (inkwells, hooks, pedestals) or decorations (medallions, sculptures, busts). The production of jewellery represented the height of cast-iron production the first half of the nineteenth century, with foundries in Berlin, Gleiwitz (today’s Gliwice in Upper Silesia), and Komárov specialising in this art.

(JMl)