Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 15. (Budapest, 1995)

Calendar of events 1994

Chinese collection: wooden, lacquered, bronze, ceramic and ivory statues, paintings, textiles and ritual objects-among them many items unappreciated up until now. The material was organized in such a way that the exhibition, besides displaying the works of art, gave an insight into the characteristics of Chinese monastic architecture, evoking the atmosphere of the shrines, attempting to show the original settings and uses of the artistically beautiful ritual objects. With its colour pictures, the catalogue -one of the Hopp Museum's finest publications so far-outlined the history of Chinese Buddhist art; the illustrations were accompanied by descriptions providing excellent orientation for the art collector and layman alike. The descriptions, the introduction and the list of objects (the last mentioned appended in a separate booklet) were in both Hungarian and English. The exhibition was opened by the writer Gábor Karátson. On September 7, to mark the start of the jubilee commemorations, wreaths were laid at the grave of Ferenc Hopp (1833-1919), the founder of the Hopp Museum, on the seventyfifth anniversary of his death. On September 28 a small exhibition entitled In Memory of Ferenc Hopp opened in the ground-floor passage of the building. With the help of documents and objects which have come down to us, the exhibition presented the career of Ferenc Hopp: how an optician's apprentice from Moravia became the owner of the firm Calderoni and Co., the pioneer of the production in Hungary of visual aids and other teaching equipment for schools, a rich Budapest citizen, a respected patron of the arts, a traveller in distant lands, an art collector, and-by means of his last will and testament-the founder of the Museum of Eastern Asiastic Arts. The exhibition and the written information accompanying it were the work of Marianne Felvinczi Takács, Mária Ferenczy and Judit Vinkovics. In honour of the jubilee, the small exhibition Chinese Porcelain from the Bottom of the Sea and Other New Acquisitions opened in the György Ráth Museum, also on September 28. This was the work of Judit Vinkovics and all her colleagues at the Hopp Museum. On display were the most important acquisitions of the last five years: not just porcelain from sunken ships, but, among other things, Burmese wood carvings, Tibetan and Nepalese Buddhist statues, and Japanese wood-block prints. The jubilee was also honoured by papers published in the 14th volume of the yearbook Ars Decorativa and in the journal Keletkutatás [Oriental Researches], a popular journal of Hungarian orientalism. In the latter a biography of Ferenc Hopp was also published, written by Marianne Felvinczi Takács. To mark the anniversary, we published a set of picture postcards showing some of the new acquisitions, as well as some of Ferenc Hopp

's favourite pieces. On the cover were archive photographs of the Hopp Collection and the garden of the Hopp villa. The exhibition, and the history of the Hopp Museum, were introduced at a press briefing. In the meantime the mini-exhibition series begun in 1993 and entitled Rare and Valuable Pieces from the Collections of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts continued: Buddhist Symbols on Chinese Lacquerwares, consisting primarily of carved red lacquerwares and supplementing the main exhibition, was on display in the ground-floor passage of the Hopp Museum from March 4 until August 30; this was the work of Györgyi Fajcsak. In the Ráth Museum, besides the permanent exhibition Chinese Arts and Japanese Arts and the small exhibition A Korean Scholar'

s Studio from the End of the 19th Century, visitors could see a valuable group of objects: Eighteenthcentury Animal-shaped Decorative Vessels from Iran (this was on show from June 1 until September 15, and was the work of Mihály Dobrovits). For each of the mini-exhibitions an introductory leaflet was written. Mária Ferenczy