Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 18. (Budapest, 1999)
Maria FERENCZY: The formation of the Hopp-collection. On the 80th anniversary of the foundation of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts
back to his years in America, which he himself recalled. "I lived in New York at the time the first Japanese delegation arrived to the States on the ship Susquehanna to pay a visit to the President.""" He became acquainted with a member of the delegation and repaid his gift, a Japanese silver medal, with a pair of opera-glasses/ 4 Nevertheless, the first trip around the world - two months spent in India followed by impressions of Hong Kong and Japan may be regarded as decisive. It was then that he took a closer look at pieces of Oriental art, carvings of gems, ivory, precious wood and lacquer, cloisonné, and finely wrought bronze objects of everyday use and for festive occasions, the important types of object for the collection to be. In these, not unconnected with the experiences of an optician engaged in lens-grinding, the meticulous craftmanship and a conspicuous beauty were appreciated rather than antiquity. In his quickly developing collection souvenirs, the objects d'art and the pieces of ethnographic interest were kept together from beginning to end. His collector's activity was known and generally appreciated by the collectors and museologists of the age. There were, however, certain fastidious persons - for example, Count Péter Vay, titular bishop, who was proud of his own expertise and writings on Oriental arts, - who dubbed the collection personally motivated and therefore mixed merely as "the Hopp's junk shop." 55 From the 1890s onwards his collection grew not only during his trips, but at home also. He kept up a regular correspondence with the firm Kuhn & Komor, availing himself of their services in bringing back objects bought in the Orient, and ordering others from them. 50 He made purchases from art dealers in Vienna, 57 and no small number of Oriental art objects appearing on the developing Hungarian art-market ended up in his possession. 55 Oriental pictorial art remained to the end an alien field to him (among the several thousand pieces in the collection there is only a series of Indian miniatures and a couple of roll-paintings). Some pictures he bought in Budapest mostly from Hungarian artists -, to embellish his home. 59 Practically no piece in his collection was sold or exchanged as the acquisition of each piece was associated with personal memories. On the other hand, he willingly lent out pieces for exhibitions in museums. The first instance of this kind can be dated to 1889: in the National Exhibition of Children's Education held at the Museum of Ethnography items of clothing and other artefacts of ethnographic interest collected by Hopp during his first trip around the world were exhibited. Beside children's clothing from Burma and China, children's shoes, women's clothing and a plaster-cast of a Chinese girl's bound foot are mentioned in the catalogue of the exhibition. 40 In 1904, on the initiative of the architect Róbert K. Kertész, a charity exhibition of Oriental art was staged in the Hungarian National Museum by seven Hungarians who had travelled in the Orient. Out of the "many precious objects of the rich collection" (so went a contemporary description) Chinese porcelain was emphasized, as was the Buddha statue from Burma, the Japanese domestic shrine and Chinese and Japanese sculptures. 41 In 1907, at an exhibition by Hungarian private collectors in Budapest, his collection contributed the largest number of Oriental pieces of art. 42 In those times he already employed the help of an art historian to develop the collection, Zoltán Felvinczi Takács, who became his trusted companion. This young employee of the Museum of Fine Arts had proved already through his arrangement of the Museum's Far Eastern material i. e. of the Count Péter Vay's Japanese collection 45 that he was a well-informed expert on Oriental art.
