Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 31. (Budapest, 2017)
Diána RADVÁNYI: Changes in the Critical Reception of Haban Ceramics: A Brief History of Research with a Discussion of Some Prominent Viewpoints
bans, or new Christians, migrated to Hungary in the early 17th century; they brought with them the faience technique (tin-glaze). Our oldest piece bears the date 1606.532 This picture is nuanced by the fact that post-Haban ceramics did indeed belong to the realm of folk art, as they were designed to appeal to the tastes of a wider stratum of society and were indeed made by village masters who obviously drew upon Haban traditions. However, it must not be overlooked that Hutterite-Haban and Haban ceramics in the 17th century were made by Hutterites living in much closed societies, who usually made products for their own noble patrons. The colony did business directly with the landowner, who supplied them with raw materials and also offered them protection so they could work and practice their religion. The Habans could not sell their wares freely, with only one exception that we know of: in Alvinc they made an agreement with Gábor Bethlen to sell any surplus products at the market. With respect to folk art, we should keep in mind that in the Central European socialist states, certain areas of research could be conducted under the label ‘folk art’ that were not allowed under the label ‘high art’—such as Anabaptist, thus religious, art designed for the tastes of the former noble stratum. Moreover, without question, Haban professional literature has benefitted greatly from the research of Mária Kresz, an eminent scholar of folk ceramics. Collectors and specialists At the end of the 19th and in the early 20th centuries, when the concepts of ‘collector’ and ‘museum specialist’ had not yet diverged, it seemed natural that the first writers to deal with Haban ceramics became well acquainted with the material through collecting. Later, relevant professional publications typically noted those experts who, based on their degrees and workplaces, studied the material ‘officially’. In Hungary, however, the writings of collector Béla Krisztinkovich, who lived and published as an ’unofficial expert’ until 1969, are unavoidable if one researches the professional literature on Haban ceramics. His daughter and son-in-law, Mária Krisztinkovich and Jenő Horváth (J. Eugene Horvath), carried on and nurtured his legacy in Vancouver, Canada, as did his grandson László Réti in Budapest. When the Horváth-Krisztinkovich couple used the term ‘hundred-year Haban war’ they did not mean only language/na- tional divisions in the literature. They saw many problems with the ‘cooperation’ private collectors were obliged to engage in with national museum collections in the socialist states following the Second World War, as it meant the authorities supervised ownership rights. In their view “the ‘war’ was prosecuted by peaceful, mild-mannered, learned museum curators in those same countries who under the socialist regime were suddenly and unexpectedly given immense powers. They were instructed that they were to be not just curators anymore, but—whether they liked it or not— also collectors, whose task it was to recover the ‘people’s property’ from those who were now regarded as speculating ‘capitalist enemies of the people’, the private collectors. In somewhat similar vein during the German occupation the excuses for confiscation were ‘Jewish property’ or ‘decadent art’, although the expropriated collections did not necessarily go to the appropriate museums.”33 34
