Vadas József (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 13. (Budapest, 1993)

ZLINSZKYNÉ STERNEGG Mária: Emlékmeghatározások

MÁRIA ZLINSZKY STERNEGG ATTRIBUTION OF TWO CHESTS A Chest from 1668 The most common ways of decorating furniture are painting, carving and inlaywork. A rather scarce technique, which was nevertheless present in furniture making for about three centuries, was to decorate the furniture with applied woodcuts. The huge pine chest from 1668 (see pict.l)

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, in the collection of the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts, represents this kind of technique. Its front is divided into rectangular and arched fields by profiled lath frames and dentils. The double arches are repeated twice on the chest. The front of the plinth is divided into three framed fields, flanking two drawers. The rim of the plinth is lobed under the drawers and equipped with a paper note showing the date: 1668. The plain sides have stirrup-shaped wrought iron handles. The plain top - with traces of paint - opens on an iron band. The chest can be closed by another iron band with a bent end, placed in the middle of the top. The chest still has its original key. Inside: a deep compartment with a top on the left side, while the back is equipped with a narrow, rimmed shelf. The chest and the plinth are applied with paper woodcut panels, imitating or replacing inlaywork. The broad fields of the front show two assymetrical buildings and two symmetrical gate towers in the double arches with pilasters. The narrow, elongated standing and lying rectangular fields are decorated with lush foliage. The bends of the delicate, S-shaped tendril of small flowers reveal four flowers with large petals. Because of the extension, the continuous pattern is interrupted on the woodcuts of the horizontal fields. Cut ornaments of the tendril decorate the segments of the arches. The five fields of the plinth are filled with a simple black and white chessboard woodcut. The front rim of the frame on the top is enriched with a narrow stripe of the tendril pattern, glued to a lath. The earliest examples of stamped graphics used in furniture decoration can be found in Lombardia.

2 Milanese chests from about 1490 show that furniture makers were already using printed woodcuts instead of expensive inlays on both the frames and the fields of the furniture, enriched with free hand drawing. In order to use a motif more than once these illustrations were rather general, representing an "ideal architecture". The drawing of the architecture is linear, alluding to inner courts and squares in the perspectives. Decorating furniture with applied woodcuts was used in Southern Germany already before the middle of the sixteenth century. It is a known fact that Erasmus Loy, a "Formschncider", that is, an engraver of Regensburg was given imperial privilege for sheets showing architectural decoration, which he published in a collection entitled "Flatterpapier". In 1557 Loy lodged a complaint against Hans Rofet and Utz Mayer cabinetmakers from