1:35 Sporák

A kitchen in a gutted house

The front wall of a tenement is gone, but the kitchen is still standing, complete with a cast-iron stove that is smoking. Soldiers crowd around it, the pipe runs out through a window and mess tins stand on the hotplate. A view like that works through contradiction: a piece of domestic furnishing in the middle of rubble says more about the length of the fighting than any weapon.

A cast-iron stove was an absolute matter of course in European households of the first half of the twentieth century, and when a house was occupied it became military equipment straight away. It therefore suits the interior of a town apartment, a country kitchen and improvised quarters in a ruin — and each time it carries a different meaning.

Contents: the package carries 14 cast parts and with them a fret of photo-etched parts. Etched metal is right here, because a stove has exactly the thin components a casting cannot give: doors, handles, grilles and the trim of the hotplate.

Painting cast iron: it starts with a black that has a grayish cast, not with pure black. The hotplate is polished with graphite applied with a finger, which gives the metal a soft sheen. The edges and the corners around the doors get rust, because that is where a stove suffered most.

Smoke and life: the stovepipe should not end in empty air. It is either led out through a broken window or joined to a chimney. Ash and a few pieces of wood are scattered around the base and a kettle is set on the hotplate. Only that turns a piece of furniture into a place where something is happening.

• Suitable for town apartments and country houses alike
• It works as the center of gravity of an interior scene with figures
• Dishes, a chimney and a building are not part of the package