Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 30. (Budapest, 2016)
Edit DARABOS: Altera Theca continens.A Research Into Historical Leather Cases made for Esterhazy Treasury Items
EDIT DARABOS ALTERA THECA CONTINENS..A A RESEARCH INTO HISTORICAL LEATHER CASES MADE FOR ESTERHÁZY TREASURY ITEMS2 The items of fine metalwork and jewellery, ornamental weaponry and clothing from the Esterházy Treasury that are kept in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest are widely known, thanks to a number of exhibitions held in recent years and to the publications and catalogues dealing with the treasury items. The history of the treasury in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries now forms the subject of a recently published summary study.3 Along with an analysis of the inventories, the latest studies published on the Esterházy Treasury also provide information on how the items were stored.4 However, it is far less generally known that items made of precious metals, gemstones or ivory also had their own cases, specially constructed to protect them in storage or during transit. These cases were made of wood, covered in gold tooled leather, and a large number of them - mostly without the objects they were designed to house, and now serving as physical reminders of the missing treasures - can be found today in the treasury room of Forchtenstein Castle (Austria). Even more of the cases, however, were brought to Budapest in 1918, presumably performing their original function as a means of protecting the treasury items.5 In 1945, a bomb hit the Esterházy palace on Tárnok Street (Buda Castle) where many items from the treasury were being stored, resulting in severe damage to the items and their leather cases. The majority of the cases remained in their bombed condition - in the form of hundreds of fragments of wood, leather and lining material - from the time they were dug up in 1948 until the quite recent past.6 (See cover photo) During conservation and restoration work begun in 2011, the Museum of Applied Arts selected fragments from 37 cases, 19 of which can be positively associated with specific treasury items, including items of fine metalwork that are currently in Budapest or Forchtenstein, others that were completely or almost completely destroyed, and some that can no longer be identified today. The majority of the cases are so deformed or are lacking so many pieces that restoration - in the usual meaning of the word - is only possible for a small minority of them. (Figs. 1-2) Including the cases restored as part of the conservation project, a total of around 200 cases from the two locations are in a proper state to be examined, constituting a group of artefacts that can boast Europe-wide significance.7 Thanks to the large number of cases available, it is possible to present them here, by comparing them with the treasury items themselves and with archive documents concerning the treasury, as potential “resource materials”. Among the questions to be answered is the matter of whether the cases can provide us with information about the development of the treasury and about the items of fine metalwork they 29
