Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 16. (Budapest, 1997)

LOVAY Zsuzsanna: Thék Endre szerepe a budai királyi palota Szent István tennének berendezésében

prochable execution as follows: "Thék, the most outstanding representative of Hungarian wood industry, has once more proved his being up to his fame".

14 At the Universal Exhibition in Paris, the St.Stephen room carried off one of the first awards. Comments in the specialized press of the time were both full of enthousiasm and awe for the performance of Hauszmann and his collaborators Endre Thék, Ignác Roskovics, Alajos Stróbl, Géza Györgyi and the enterprize Kiessling & Son.

15 Hauszmann writes as follows in his autobiography about further rooms of the palace he was commissionned to renovate: "In order to fulfill my task of furnishing and decorating the rooms of the palace, I set off in 1899 for a study-tour ... in the company of Lajos Ybl. We visited the royal palaces of Berlin, Copenhague, Stockholm, Amsterdam, The Hague, Brussels, London, Paris and Munich. I thus had the occasion to see and study many things I could later use for the inner decoration of the palace in Buda".

16 In the reception rooms, appartments and corridors, Hauszmann also used furniture realized during different periods - Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism and Empire which he bought abroad or had imported from the Viennese court. He moreover had several complementary copies made, "which our master Endre Thék executed with such proficiency that it is impossible to distinguish his work from the original".

17 The carved, lathe-turned chair with embossed, painted and gilded leather-work (Fig. 9), the illustration of which figured in an article published in 1903 in the periodical Magyar Iparművészet as "Original Italian oak armchair, XVIIth century" is probably the model of the copy realized in Thék's furniture factory and kept in the collection of the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts. Both chairs concord in every detail, although the exemplary of the museum is made of walnut, with embossed leather-work decorated with a floral motif.

18 (fig- 10). "Having been informed that His Majesty's Chamberlain intended to furnish the rooms of the palace of Buda with scrap pieces of furniture from the Viennese Burg and the Schönbrunn Castle... we turned to the King personnally with the request of possibly having some new furniture made in Hungary. His Majesty being in a rather good mood, I answered the questions he asked me about the styles and the quality of the decoration and told him that I am in the process of designing some furniture corresponding, in the richness of its execution, to the style of the great reception rooms, and that I intend to decorate the rest of the rooms with the scrap material His Majesty would find appropriate to provide."

19 "Modern style" is predominating in the rooms decorated for the King and his suite, and Secession is already marking the mahagóni furniture and decorative objects modelled on English fashion. The historicizing influence, clearly permeating the Secession style of these intérieurs, has invested them with a definitely eclectic character. The furniture, the wooden panelling, as well as all of the inner woodwork were realized by Endre Thék, János Csepreghy and the firm Miksa Gelb & Sons. Alajos Hauszmann "...also did great service to Hungarian applied arts and decoration through the work he achieved in the renovation of the palace; he had the furniture and decoration made, whenever possible, by Hungarian craftsmen, which helped in developing their taste; he mostly directed their work personnally either as foreman, councilor or, in many cases, designer of the objects in question."

20 The great transformation and decoration works in the Buda palace were brought to an end in 1905. "A celebration in honour of Alajos Hauszmann was organized on the occasion of the end of the work by his collaborators, lead by Endre Thék, in April 1905. Hauszmann and all of his collaborators were given a silver medal designed by Géza Maróti-Rintel and realized by Alajos Stróbl in rememberance of the day."

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