Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 30. (Budapest, 2016)
Ildikó PANDUR: A Wrought-Iron Exhibition Hall Gateway from 1883: A Contribution to the Architectural History of the Old Exhibition Hall and the Old Music Academy in Budapest
workshop, which was never short of commissions. As a result of his high professional esteem, he played a major role in social and artistic public life. Jungfer is tied via several threads to Adolf Lang’s (Old) Exhibition Hall. The building - within whose walls he probably attended one of the social highlights of 1882, the costumed ball for artists held in honour of the painter Mihály Munkácsy, who was paying a visit home from Paris - still houses the large staircase grille made by the master metalworker. (Fig. 11) The wrought-iron gateway40 (Fig. 13) which he made for a building on Kodály Circus (further along Andrássy Avenue in the direction of the City Park), similar in age and style to the staircase grille, is one of his most popular creations, often featuring in print;41 one of its side elements - with a few minor differences - formed part of the warehouse of samples.42 (Fig. 12) All this may have influenced the decision to award the commission to make the exhibition gateway to Jungfer. Sándor Uhl’s design was amended during the manufacturing process. Instead of Uhl’s solution for fastening the gateway, additional, narrow sections of grille were fixed to the wall. The moving gates were attached to these sections, and not directly to the wall. The alteration may have been suggested by the experienced Gyula Jungfer himself. Incidentally, in 1896, when the institution moved to its present location on Üllői Road, Jungfer also issued three invoices for work carried out for the Museum of Applied Arts.43 The “old-new” wrought-iron exhibition gateway Sándor Uhl’s idea of installing ornate wrought-iron railings in the new, groundfloor premises, rented in the Old Music Academy, may have been prompted not only by the need to adapt to the characteristics of the premises - and perhaps by his interest in the genre - but also one additional factor. In February 1883, just a few months before his appointment, a new, large-sized item had been added to the museum’s collection of wrought-iron objects, when the Department of Coins and Antiquities at the Hungarian National Museum transferred into the possession of the Museum of Applied Arts an “iron grille of 1721, donated to the National Museum by Miss Mária Trentmann (resident of 2 Corvin Square)”.44 From the letter45 written by József Hampel, curator of the National Museum’s Department of Coins and Antiquities, to György Ráth, it can be determined that the iron gift was “a pediment above a door”. The only item in the collection of wrought-iron objects at the Museum of Applied Arts that bears this date is the pediment46 that is identifiable from the plan that recently came to light. The fact that the date “1721” appeared on the curtain motif on its right-hand plinth, when the work was supposed to be attributed to Gyula Jungfer, has so far been a source of bafflement. The new data, however, allowed us to suppose that Sándor Uhl had drafted a plan whereby the eighteenth-century pediment received as a gift from the National Museum was incorporated into a new frame; and that Gyula Jungfer, a master of historicist works with vast expertise in the different styles and technical characteristics of older works of iron, had then turned the plan into reality, and had created a new frame around the pediment.47 This supposition led to a thorough re-examination of the object in question, and may be correct. 108
