Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 31. (Budapest, 2017)

Zsuzsa MARGITTAL: La Fontaine’s Fables and Other Animal Tales in the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts’ Collection

Tales inspired ceramics companies, too. No better proof is an exact copy of the aforementioned scenes on a pattern sheet from the Zsolnay factory (Fig. 13). Made in the fashion of the Minton Company, the pattern sheet displays several ceramic designs.41 The frog riding a lizard to see his bride was used on an object clearly not for children: an ashtray. The prototype for the object’s form may have been an ashtray brought from Japan and placed in Zsolnay’s

import collection, among objects used as models. The Japanese tray displays a frog rowing a boat.42 The Zsolnay Company, which often sought challenges and opportunities to demonstrate its technical bravura, decided to imitate the symmetrical folding- in of two edges of the Japanese ashtray; this reflects the company’s mastery of the craft. The scenes depicted on the object, however, were often part of glazing experiments, as was the case with the pig ashtray, whose de11. Handkerchief from a set of six, with a scene of the frog visiting Miss Mousey in

‘A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go’, Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest, inv. no. 90.73.1-6

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