The Exotic Salon of the Master of the House: The History of the Václav Stejskal Collection.

Václav Stejskal (1851–1934) was considered by his contemporaries as an important donor to the National Museum in the 1920s, when he donated objects from his collection obtained during his journey to the Far East in 1886–1888 to the above-mentioned institution. His collection was the result of his travel to China, Japan and Southeast Asia on board the Austro-Hungarian corvette Aurora, where he was assigned as a “Marine-Kommisär”. On this journey he gathered around seven hundred ethnographic and art and craft items, which were displayed to the wide audience in his villa in the Brdy mountains near Prague after his return, and later were bequeathed to the National Museum.