Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 28. (Budapest, 2012)

Ildikó PANDUR: Links between the Oeuvres of Ödön Lechner and Gyula Jungfer

could be moved within a four-legged base." Each piece had three glass-wing frames opening and locked separately with a special contraption. (The "Belgian ground white glass panes" used might be an outcome of contacts Gyula Jungfer possibly made during his successful showing at the Brussels World Fair of 1888.) "The semicircular mover" and the two coloured stands had to be firmly fixable in the fourlegged base. Regrettably, Lechner's plan drawing was missing from the above documents. It has been spotted recently among documents pertaining to Lechner in the Archive of the Museum of Applied Arts.

8 (figs. 2-3— 4-5) The drawing with the title "National Picture Gallery showcase for the display of prints" and with the signature "architect Ödön Lechner" has a front and side view, cross section and ground plan of the furniture item. The typical ogee arches wellknown from his buildings

9 reflect the influence of the gothic - of the very period in which wrought-iron work flourished. The foundations of the National Picture Gallery were laid by the Esterházy collection transferred from Vienna to Budapest in 1865 and purchased in 1870, complemented with a collection of drawings and prints. The second public collection of the country established in 1871

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0 was housed for decades in the building of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences." (It was as late as in 1905 that the collection could move into its own building, the Museum of Fine Arts, which opened for the public the next year.)

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2 2. Design by Ödön Lechner of the iron showcase for graphics, made for the National Picture Gallery, 1892, front view (MAA Archive

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