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Cast metal advertising ashtray, Královopolská (Brno, Czechoslovakia)
Object/Artifact
A small circular ashtray of cast light metal (aluminum or a similar silvery alloy), with a shallow bowl, an everted rim, and two cigarette rests notched into the rim. The interior back wall is impressed with the maker's emblem: a toothed cogwheel/gear device encircling the legend "KRÁLOVOPOLSKÁ" with "BRNO" below — the logo of the Královopolská engineering works of Brno. The metal has an unpolished, slightly granular cast surface, now scratched, scuffed, and dulled with use. The form is the standard mid-century round metal ashtray; as a piece carrying a company logo it functioned as promotional/advertising or commemorative ware.
2025.1.128
Belonged to Leopoldo Arús Caraballo
The Cabrera Arús family collection
Leopoldo Arús Caraballo collection
2025.1
Královopolská strojírna
Brno
Czechoslovakia
Eastern Europe
Europe
Maker Královopolská (Královopolská strojírna), the heavy-engineering works in the Královo Pole district of Brno, Czechoslovakia (today the Czech Republic). The firm traces to 1889 (founded as Lederer-Porges/Königsfelder Maschinenfabrik), was nationalized in 1945, and was a leading Czechoslovak machine-building enterprise — producing cranes, steel structures, heat exchangers, reactors, and heavy industrial equipment — through the socialist period. The ashtray is branded promotional ware bearing the company's cogwheel logo; the actual casting may have been made by or for the firm. Date Undetermined; consistent with the socialist-era (post-1945, pre-1990) period of the nationalized Královopolská enterprise. No date is cast into the piece. The branded promotional character and the company's nationalized-era identity point to a mid-to-late 20th-century date, compatible with the collection range, but nothing fixes an exact year. Place of Origin Brno, Czechoslovakia (per the "KRÁLOVOPOLSKÁ / BRNO" mark).
Impressed cogwheel/gear device enclosing "KRÁLOVOPOLSKÁ" (curved within the gear) and "BRNO" (below center).
aluminum
Materials Cast light metal — aluminum or aluminum-type alloy (silvery, lightweight cast appearance; not confirmed by testing). Technique Sand- or die-cast metal, with the logo integrally cast/impressed; finished with cigarette-rest notches in the rim.
Fair
Leopoldo Arús Caraballo
owner
Havana
Cuba
Caribbean
Central America
use
Brno
Czechoslovakia
Eastern Europe
Europe
production
The object thus illustrates both the everyday material culture of the period (a household/office smoking accessory) and the wider geography of Cuba's socialist-bloc trade ties. Královopolská remains an operating engineering company in Brno today.