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

Mária FERENCZY: Chinese Moon Gate on Budapest's Andrássy Avenue. The Garden of Ferenc Hopp, I

MÁRIA FERENCZY A CHINESE MOON GATE ON BUDAPEST'S ANDRASSY AVENUE THE GARDEN OF FERENC HOPP, I In Budapest, at Andrássy út 103., stands a modest two-storey villa (today the building of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts). Around it is the most unusual - Oriental style - garden in the capital: its one-time owner, Ferenc Hopp, stocked it with Oriental art works of various kinds and with rare plants. A good proportion of the art works are still in place, but the garden's condition is already less indicative of the beauty once found there. Below, on the basis of documents accessible to us today, we present the largest art work in the garden, the Chinese Moon Gate, and at the same time outline the more important moments in the garden's history. Ferenc Hopp (1833-1919), the founder of the Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts, was a wealthy Budapest citizen. By profession he was an optician, the owner and successful developer of the firm Calderoni & Co.

1 He was a great traveller: as well as undertaking numerous longer and shorter journeys, he travelled round the world five times between 1876 and 1914. Especially dear to him were the Far East, the souvenirs he purchased there and later on his art collection, which he built up in the course of the decades. The garden around the villa Ferenc Hopp purchased the property at Andrássy út 103 in 1885, after his first round-the-world journey. It consisted of a villa set in a garden. After the making of alterations stipulated by him, he placed his treasured artefacts there and then moved in.

2 He named the villa Buitenzorg Villa, after the remarkable botanical garden at Buitenzorg (today Bogor) in Java, the visiting of which had been one of his greatest pleasures.

3 Rare vegetation was planted in the garden, and Oriental art objects were also placed there. Owing to a lack of written sources, we are unable to follow this process in all its details, although many moments in it can be known. The state of the garden at this time is documented by photographs that have survived (among them photographs taken by Ferenc Hopp himself), and by a few laconic descriptions. Additionally, private letters that have come down to us bear witness to the story of some of the art works located in it. The earliest surviving photograph in which the villa features was taken by György Klösz (ill. I)

4 and shows Andrássy út in the late 1870s.

5 We can see that the multistoreyed buildings next door to it today had not yet been built, even behind it in Délibáb utca there was no such structure. In the front garden of the villa the trees and bushes are all young and slender. Directly behind the house we see the side of a low outbuilding. Neither a photograph nor ground plan showing the back garden from this time is known to us. With regard to the state of the garden ten years later, we already have more detailed information. To mark the occasion of Ferenc Hopp's professional jubilee, in 1895