Living art persia dinnerware4/1/2024 Zsolnay ceramics of this time reflect a variety of artistic influences. 4 In all likelihood it was this experience that inspired Zsolnay to develop his own high-fire glazes. The Vienna exhibition was also a turning point in Zsolnay production because Vilmos Zsolnay was introduced to Minton’s high-fire glazed “Persian-style” ornamental dishes and the Minton experiments in turquoise, yellow, and plum glazes which closely resembled Chinese cloisonné enamel. The exposition’s jury, in recognition of Zsolnay’s work, awarded Vilmos a bronze medal and the title of Knight of the Order of Franz Josef. The export orders arriving after the Vienna exhibition-from England, France, Russia, America, and Austria-significantly in creased the factory’s production. The description suggests that these were standard forms in accordance with the taste of the period, featuring a number of dishes for daily use, the models for which were still taken partly from the production of Ignác Zsolnay. Much interest was generated by the terracottas embellished with a color glaze, the medallions adorned with a woman’s head, the consoles, column capitals, and cornice moldings, and the Hungarian coat of arms in color. There were tobacco containers, match-holders, coffee boxes, mixing bowls, pots, pans, pharmaceutical jars, cups, large lidded chalices, firkins, and smooth white washbasin sets. We also exhibited pitchers with impressed pour-spouts, black- rimmed French jugs decorated with tiny bouquets of flowers, Hungarian pitchers decorated in cobalt, and fine terracotta pitchers with narrow necks and high handles, decorated with a pattern based on an antique, probably Roman, design. Another had a body pressed flat and a pointed pouring lip, and was ornamented with relief decoration. One had a bulging body, tapering neck, and pronounced handle. On the gradually narrowing shelf at the exhibition were large terracotta garden vases decorated with colorful floral garlands, and among the various shapes and styles of ornamental objects, the prettiest were the Renaissance pitchers glazed brown or blue. Some of his ornamental dishes were decorated by transfer prints, others by Schmelzfarben (high-fired colors), designed and executed by a painter named Claven. Zsolnay’s first major success came at the 1873 Vienna World Exhibition. 2 Through his business connections in England, France, Germany, and Austria, he was familiar with the trends of the period and able to introduce and market fashionable items that appeared as novelties to his small-town customers. 1 Beginning in 1865 he worked to improve his ornamental ceramics by testing a number of raw materials in and around Pécs, by introducing kaolin from Bohemia, and by refining these materials and even selling them. As his daughter Teréz noted in her memoirs, Vilmos had wanted to be a painter in his youth. Vilmos Zsolnay adhered to this ideal of technical and artistic perfection. Innovation came through the methodical, often ideological, adaptation of artistic forms and the deliberate, if occasional, exploration of symbolic content. In practical terms, historicism was based on the encyclopedic knowledge of craft. European culture had always recognized and practiced a kind of historicism in the adaptation and embellishment of historical forms. This change in perspective was influenced by an unparalleled broadening of historical awareness-as evident in the separation of historic periods-and the discovery of the innate possibilities in historical investigations. While so-called historicist works were once judged to embody a retrograde spirit of academicism and the unimaginative repetition of bygone stylistic periods, such historicism is now considered a direction that actually anticipated modernism in terms of both theory and practice, in many respects tending to look forward rather than to adhere strictly to tradition. The interpretation of historicism has undergone a gradual change in recent decades. From the exhibition: Hungarian Ceramics from the Zsolnay Manufactory, 1853-2001. In the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, New York. Published for The Bard Graduate Center for Studies Originally published in Hungarian Ceramics from the ZsolnayĬsenkey and Ágota Steinery.
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