Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 26. (Budapest, 2008)

Zsolt SOMOGYI: An Adaptable Applied Artist. Pál Horti's American Furniture

7. Hat Rack (no. 222 fi ), made by the Shop of the Crafters, c. 1910. Collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum, donated by Cincinnati Art Galleries, inv. no. 1986.908 of sixty-seven pages. The original publication was in horizontal format, on ninety-two numbered pages with one to four large-sized excellent-quality photographs on each page. Besides the numbered pages, the catalogue also contained sixteen unnumbered ones, which do not appear in the facsimile edition. On a significant percentage of these unnumbered pages we could discover drawings of furniture: series of bookcases, beds and rocking chairs. The bookcases - whether without doors or glazed in different ways (divided into fields or undivided) - show the influence of English furniture art. On the beds there already appear the inlay panels characteristic of Horti (leaves arranged in a circle or a square, with or without tendrils); in the chair drawings it is simple unembellished pieces of furniture that can be seen. However, on one half of the first unnumbered page there is also a photograph: a rocking chair designed by Horti that is embellished with tulip inlay ('no. 332. Mission Rocker'), which with regard to form exhibits a close kinship to the armchair of the library suite. The caption for the artefact is unusual: while four other inlay-embellished pieces of furniture have in their descriptions the comment 'Marquetry panels of colored imported Austrian woods', this rocking chair is the only product where instead of 'Austrian' the adjective 'Hungarian' features. In a paper written in 1986,

22 Kenneth R. Trapp, one of the first researchers of the history of the Shop of the Crafters and the writer of the introduction to the facsimile edition of the catalogue, assumed when evaluating Shop of the Crafters products and Horti's work that the Hungarian artist had participated in the creation of the pieces merely as