On 6 February 1795, Prince Wilhelm of Auersperg (finally) obtained a granted concession from Vienna and construction works commenced. However, because the works proceeded slowly, pig iron first flowed from the blast furnace only a year later, on 17 April 1796. Production immediately exceeded expectations. The ironworks buildings were built on the banks of the Krka River, and water was used to power bellows for blowing air into the blast furnace and kilns, to drive sledgehammers, to wash and crush ore, and to power machines in the mechanical workshops, wood lathes, grinders, saws and pumps.

With the advent of the water-powered double drum blower, which was built in Dvor, iron ore production was even faster. The quality and quantity of pig iron produced have also increased significantly. This allowed the Dvor Ironworks to expand and modernise. In 1804, the Dvor Ironworks became the first ironworks in the whole of the then Slovenian territory to smelt cast iron directly from the blast furnace.

The Dvor Ironworks: Unrivalled in the Whole of Carniola

After the abolition of the Illyrian provinces, the iron manufacturing industry in Carniola fell into a severe crisis. In March 1817, the management of the Dvor Ironworks reduced the number of employees from 216 to 92, and the total production of iron dropped sharply from 493 to 143 tonnes. The drastic cuts were caused by competition from English and Swedish iron in Italy and the Middle East, which was 20% cheaper. Nevertheless, from 1820 to the mid-19th century, the Dvor Ironworks had no real competition in Carniola, as it was the only iron foundry that dominated the domestic market, as well as the markets in Italy and Croatia.

In 1822, the dilapidated blast furnace was rebuilt and raised by 2.5 metres, and two years later, two more cupola furnaces with a height of over three metres high were built. They enabled pig iron from the blast furnace to be melted directly into cast iron. The cupola furnaces enabled a significantly higher production of quality cast iron, and the transformation of the Dvor Ironworks from a classical ironworks to a large iron foundry was complete. During this period, a limestone and slag crusher, a sledgehammer, a crane for carrying heavier products and a new material storage building were also acquired. In the 1830s, the Dvor Iron Foundry again employed between 220 and 250 workers and produced between 392 and 448 tonnes of pig iron, foundry and other products annually. It has thus become the largest and even the only foundry in the whole area south of the Alps.

As such, it struggled to meet the great number of orders it received from home and abroad. Its products were abroad mainly sold in Italy and Croatia. In 1835, it also had three warehouses: in Ljubljana (in Auersperg’s Princely Court), in Trieste and in Venice. In Dvor, the quality of the products was ensured by well-trained employees, who came mainly from the Styrian lands. The Dvor Iron Foundry also employed a large number of miners, foresters, charcoal-burners and carriage drivers, who were exclusively locals. Until the middle of the 19th century, there was no iron foundry in Carniola that was comparable to the one in Dvor in terms of technology, quality and quantity of the products produced and the number of workers. On 13 March 1836, it was therefore granted the status of a privileged ironworks at provincial level.

Poor Management and the Emergence of competition Led to an Inglorious End

On 9 August 1836, the Dvor Ironworks was hit hard by the death of its most successful director, Ignatz Vitus Engelbert Pantz. Owner Auersperg has not had a lucky hand in choosing his successor. In the years that followed, a lack of management experience and poor business decisions by Pantz’s successors led to the deterioration of many factory buildings and installations. The lack of even basic maintenance work has led to a sharp decline in the quality of pig iron and iron products. Irregular payments also caused the workers’ eagerness and productivity to dwindle.

In addition, in the second half of the 19th century, the Dvor Iron-Foundry also found a competitor in the Rosthorn Ironworks in Prevalje in Carinthia, which mainly produced rails, axles and railway wheels. Foundries in Bohinjska Bistrica (producing pinions, hydro turbines, rings and pistons for steam engines, sewer equipment and iron railings) and in Gradac in White Carniola (Bela Krajina) (producing mainly semi-finished products made of iron, and ammunition) were also put into operation. The Dvor Ironworks did not undergo any major technological development in the second half of the 19th century.

Moreover, in 1870, before the great banking crisis in the Habsburg Monarchy, it was still fully operational. It continued to produce agricultural machinery and tools, mining and ironworks machinery, mill machinery, etc. However, by this time there already operated 27 competing iron foundries in the Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Many other iron foundries in the monarchy already had railway connections to their markets, but in Dvor, raw materials and products still had to be transported by horse-drawn carts. However, the status of the Dvor Ironworks deteriorated drastically after the foundation of the Austrian-Alpine Coal, Iron and Steel Industry Company in Vienna in 1881. In a very short time, it dominated the ironworks industry in the whole of Inner Austria and, with its performance and diversification of iron industry, dictated the direction of development in this industry and thus the fate of the existence of other iron foundries.

The Dvor Ironworks managed to keep up with the competition for only about six years before it finally lost power. Due to competitors using more modern assets and because of outdated transport connections made the production much more expensive, and this was the main reason for the final collapse of this once leading Carniolan iron foundry. On 1 October 1891, the Dvor Ironworks officially ceased operations altogether. For Dvor and the surrounding area, its closure was a severe economic blow, leaving many people jobless. This was followed by increased migrations from the area. For ten years after the closure of the foundry, the inhabitants of Dvor quietly hoped that production would resume, at least to a limited extent, but in the end it never came about.

Predominantly Artistic Pieces and Useful Products

Throughout its history, the Dvor Iron Foundry has produced a wide variety of mainly artistic pieces and useful products. For example, they produced 94 different types of machines, machine parts, tools, kitchenware, irons, stoves, roof tiles, tomb crosses, railings and weights, and they also cast 89 different types of artistic castings for personal, domestic and ecclesiastical use (imperial and royal coats of arms, religious and ancient reliefs, writing instruments, clock and iron bases, candlesticks, jewellery, etc.). The production of artistic cast iron products, such as tombstones, decorated stoves, railings, window grilles, fountains, etc., was a special feature of the Dvor Ironworks.

Its products were not drastically different in shape from those of other renowned foundries across Europe. As early as 1820, naval cannons were being cast according to English models. The products were also labelled in Dvor, most famously with the HOF IN KRAIN signature. The products of the Dvor Iron Foundry were distinguished at three industrial and trade exhibitions of the Inner Austrian states and were unrivalled among the hardware products in Slovenia. In 1833, they also cast the one-metre-high coat of arms of the Auersperg princes in Dvor for the façade of the health spa building in Dolenjske Toplice.

Round and square coal and wood-fired stoves formed an important part of the production of the Dvor Ironworks. They had 14 different stove models in stock. In addition to these, cannons of various calibres, ammunition, boilers, pots for cookers, kitchen and other bowls, cooker plates, cemented ballasts, kitchen mortars, door jambs, plumbing tubes and sewer covers were cast. Two thirds of total production was devoted to cast products.

Sources:

• Pungerčar, Majda. 2021. Na Dvoru ulita umetnost. Novo mesto: Dolenjski muzej.
• Šorn, Jože. 1980. Železarna na Dvoru pri Žužemberku: zgodovina, tehnologija, izdelki. Novo mesto: Dolenjski muzej.
• Žargi, Matija. 2000. Železarna na Dvoru ob Krki. Novo mesto: Dolenjska založba.

Prejšnja objava: Ljudska balada o detomorilki: slovenske in kočevarske različice.

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Every year men from Kočevska region took to other lands of the then Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany to seek their fortune. They carried their goods in knitted peddler’s baskets and sold it in the evening in guest-houses. They offered “fix-nix” – a lottery with numbers from 1 to 10 or attracted passers-by with games “higher or lower”, “three below a hundred” or “even–odd number”. A product in the peddler’s assortment was the prize for winning the bet or drawing of the correct number. And this was the way of life all up until the Second World War.

Since 1492, when King Frederich III, granted them the right of tax-exempt free trade of their own products, the Gottscheers, who were among the first European peddlers, i.e. vagrant merchants (havzirarji from Germ. Hausierer, Eng. peddlers) sold their homemade products around European cities: woodenware (suha roba), dormouse pelts, linen, cattle, etc. In addition, in the 18^th century, they also obtained the license to resell products that were carried on horses or in a wagon from the ports of Rijeka and Bakar: fruit, rice, sardines, mussels, wine, etc. Some of them, the so-called chestnut sellers roasted and sold chestnuts, while others traded in sweets, lottery games and small items for everyday use.

The denomination of peddler (Slov: krošnjar) originates from the knitted basket – krošnja – in which peddlers carried their goods. The Gottscheer peddlers wore the basket in front, while the peddlers of Ribnica carried them on their backs. 

The peddler’s trade was a kind of social corrective that helped the Gottscheers survive in an inhospitable environment or offered them opportunity of extra earnings. However, since peddlers with their trading intruded on the business activities of city merchants, they often opposed them. Some houses even bore signboards prohibiting peddler’s trade. The ordinance from the year 1928 prohibited peddlers from calling upon private residences in Ljubljana, Maribor, Celje, Ptuj and other Slovenian tourist resorts uninvited, however, the Gottscheers had the privilege to sell the so-called Gottscheers goods – exotic fruit and confectionery – everywhere. What’s more, they even used to smuggle forbidden goods in double-bottom baskets.

Yet, peddlers were present elsewhere in Slovenia as well. The Prekmurje region was home to bošnjaki, while the Obsotelje region was visited by saharinke from Croatia and pičkurini from the Dalmatia region, inhabitants of Ribnica were selling woodenware (suha roba), umbrella-makers went from house to house and repaired umbrellas, and time never stood still when urmoharji (clock- and watchmakers) from the Osilnica valley came to visit, etc. Nowadays, especially in front of big shopping centres across Slovenia, we still come across modern-day peddlers from Ribnica. However, instead of baskets they use small lorries or vans to distribute their wares.

Sources:
– Saleški Finžgar, Fran 1957: Leta mojega popotovanja, Celje: Mohorjeva družba.
– Fontaine, Laurence 1996: History of Pedlars in Europe. Duke University Press.
– Drnovšek, Marjan 2005: Kočevarski krošnjarji in nacistična propaganda. V: Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino.
– Drnovšek, Marjan 2007: Podoba kočevskih in belokranjskih krošnjarjev v očeh javnosti do začetka 20. stoletja. V: Kronika: časopis za slovensko krajevno zgodovino.
– Počivavšek, Marija 2016: »Krošnjarjenje se je tako razpaslo po deželi, da teh posili trgovcev kar mrgoli«: Krošnjarstvo kot oblika nelojalne konkurence med svetovnima vojnama. V: Zgodovina za vse.

Do you want to know about caves in Gottschee? Click here: https://www.kocevskibrlog.com/sl/koblarska-in-crna-jama/

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Water and fire. The force of the former could be curbed only partly: through a lifted or half lifted flap it rushed in the channel and after a few metres under the wheel that powered almost everything in his smithy including the “sledgehammer”. However, when from under the Bilparska stena crag, where according to the oral tradition the Devil himself once held his abode, after several kilometres of flowing underground the brownish coloured unwieldy Bilpa charged up and blended with the high-water Kolpa River, he could nothing else but flee. The smithy was flooded. Before the torrential rains came, he had suspended everything he could, in particular heavy tools, under the ceiling using winches and had taken the rest home. Water always had the final say. In the spring and autumn it came window-high…

However, he could impact the other element that also provided for his livelihood. When the flame dwindled, he bellowed the embers and loaded charcoal. He turned from the anvil holding enormous tongs for unwrought metal in hand and pushed them into white-hot embers, and pressed the flap with his foot, fanning the bellows. I often watched him from the opposite corner. Observing my grandfather, whom I used to call father since I know, was a lot of fun. He brought a tree-stump for me, put it under the hand-operated wood drill, lifted me up and said: “Sa pa bo” (This will do it.) and laughed. I was not allowed to go near the fire. When the iron edges turned red, purple and orange, he once again took the tongs in his hands, turned around, put goggles on his nose and took the hammer in his other hand. Then he struck. It clanged. If he put the red-hot iron under the “sledgehammer”, a 90-kilogram water-powered hammer, a dull clangour was heard at a steady rhythm: tup, tup, tup, etc. 

Rudi Verderber learned the blacksmith’s craft from his father Matija and at the school in Celje. Only a few meters away from Bilpa, the stream that flows into the Kolpa River just after 200 meters, Rudi’s father built a blacksmith’s workshop when he was 43 years old. He bought the cement at a hardware store in Lokvica, which was located very far away. First he crossed the river with a wooden boat, and then he had to overcome a hill. In 1930, the closest store offering this merchandise was in the vicinity of the Croatian settlement Brod Moravice, and from there the cement bags had to be carried to Kolpa Valley that lay 300 metres lower. Because the Kolpa River is so narrow in this part (the Gorenja Žaga–Dol section), the geographers gave it the appellation the Kolpa Canyon.

Matija, my great-grandfather, was a self-taught artisan. He built the smithy by himself, and also crafted everything else that can be found in it. He himself prepared “voganca” (a charcoal pile). His father Jure, who earned the money overseas to purchase the house in Spodnja Bilpa with neighbouring fields, was not a blacksmith by profession. The former Štajdohar estate became Verderber’s and my great-great-grandfather, who originally lived in “Gorenja” Bilpa took on farming. After serving in the 1^stWorld War, his son added a new craft to this and livestock husbandry. The great-grandfather also went to America at one point, but he returned quickly. Supposedly, he did not like it there, he fell sick and after a happy homecoming he built a chapel on the hill. 

At the blacksmith’s workshop in Spodnja Bilpa they mostly forged hoes and other tools for tilling the fields. People from Bela krajina, the Kočevska (Gottschee) region, Poljanska Valley and the Upper Kolpa Valley would visit them. Later, when they built a gravel road and Rudi bought a car, he also drove around selling hoes. He was the only blacksmith far and wide.

Along the Kolpa River, once thick with mills, there was no other blacksmith before the village Mirtoviči. Jože Gorše also learned the craft from his father. However, at Gorše’s blacksmith workshop they also shooed the horses, something that was not done in Bilpa. In addition to the hammers of all sizes, they forged a variety of tools vital for livelihood: ploughs, parts for carts, hammers, chains, locks, scrapers for vineyards, etc. In her diploma paper, Maja Štimec states that in 1890 the first smithies in the Osilnica Valley were Urh in Črni Potok and Kovač in Zamost. However, neither Verderber’s nor Gorše’s blacksmith workshop is not operating anymore. 

Sources:
– Štimec, Maja. 2016. Skrb za kulturno dediščino v deželi Petra Klepca na primeru Petruvo. Diplomsko delo. Dostopno tukaj.
– Marija Verderber, Rudi Verderber’s wife

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