About the collector
The PATRIOT Gallery is my dream come true
I started collecting stones in the eighth grade of elementary school thanks to my chemistry teacher, who asked me to throw a box full of stones into the trash can. The sound of stones falling to the bottom of the metal trash can and the dazzling sun overhead turned the ordinary stones into shiny and glittering treasures! As a little boy, I did not hesitate to climb into the trash can, pull out the treasure and take it home with me. I put the stones on a shelf and that was the beginning of my journey into secrets of minerals.
As another mildstone, and again I consider it a blessing, I see having got to know Karel Koliáš, Michal Macfelda and others from the then GeoKlub Přerov group in high school. Under Karel’s guidance, we as boys started looking for stones directly in the field all over the Czech Republic. We visited many mineralogical sites in Bohemia and Moravia. It was a very beautiful period associated with friendship, trips, nature, and often crowned with remarkable findings.
University studies turned me away from the stones for a while, but then I returned to them after I moved to Prague where I met David Drahuský from Jílové near Prague. He took me underground for the first time, we visited Dolní Bory pegmatite mine and then a number of other important mining sites. At that time, I was already working and could finally afford to start buying stones.
Currently, I consider myself an important collector and populariser of mineralogy. Since 2016, I have been the main organizer of the Mineral Tišnov exchange event, a member of the editorial board of the MINERÁL magazine, an organizer of occasional professional meetings of mineral collectors, and above all, I am the founder and an operator of the PATRIOT Gallery in Tišnov.
What minerals mean to me and how I choose them
“I visited a lot of mineralogical sites, private collections, museums and also stock exchanges throughout the country as well as abroad. My collection gradually grew both, in volume and quality. I learned to compare and evaluate quality of stones. This made me realize that there was no place that would serve as a stone collection and document the best stones of our broad generation of turn-of-the-millennium collectors, while being accessible to all lay and professional mineralogists alike.
And that is why the PATRIOT Gallery was created.”
Minerals are an integral part of my own life. To me they mean joy, an opportunity to build and take care of my dream in the form of the PATRIOT Gallery, and over time, minerals have also become one of the non-traditional options for storing and evaluating financial resources for me. I hope that the Gallery will be a place you enjoy visiting as well.
My other activities concerning minerals
I participate in the organization of the mineral exchange
Since the spring of 2017 I have been organizing the Mineral Tišnov exchange event. This is the oldest and largest mineralogical meeting in the Czech Republic with more than a 40-year-long tradition. Every spring and autumn, Tišnov belongs to minerals from Friday to Sunday. In recent years, we have reached an attendance of 7,000 guests, with 210 exhibitors from various countries.
I run an e-shop with minerals
The establishment of an e-shop with minerals was the next logical step in my collecting activities, because in many cases it is necessary to purchase additional stones or replace the original exhibits when obtaining exceptional specimens for the exhibitions. And that is exactly why the e-shop is a suitable outlet for these surpluses. On the website www.mineralpatriot.cz you will find a wide range of stones at favourable prices.
TOP 111 minerals of the of the PATRIOT Gallery
Publishing activities are the icing on the cake of my collecting. These are mainly visual documentations of exhibits from my own collection and exhibitions of the PATRIOT Gallery. The TOP 111 Minerals publication, published in 2020, was among the firsts, and I already have ideas in my head for other publications, including the TOP 111 upgrade for 2030 and the following decades.