Abstract
Recent international exhibitions and conferences drew attention to the material culture related to the guilds and strived to give the research a new perspective. The Prague City Museum holds a major collection of artefacts connected with the guilds that has already been partially published but still offers the possibility of further exploration.
It must be examined especially in combination with the documents that used to be part of that collection, but which are now deposited in the Prague City Archives. This paper is based on two of these documents, which, however, do not lead us to the museum collections but to artefacts still in situ.
It deals with the altar and the tomb of the Harness Makers' Guild of Prague's Lesser Town in the Church of St. Thomas and examines its patrons and their position in Early Modern urban society.
It focuses on the period between 1620 and 1648 but stresses the fact that, thanks to the altar foundation, the legacy of guild master Balthasar Spindler lasted much longer