Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 31. (Budapest, 2017)
Ildikó PANDUR: Restoration of Metalwork from the Esterházy Treasury in the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts: Past, Present and Future
jobs in the Museum of Applied Arts.37 In 1962, applicants had to have at least secondary school qualifications. Certificates issued by the Budapest School of Fine and Applied Arts (today Secondary School of Visual Arts) started to include the entry ‘restoration’ as well as the already established ‘furniture, book and leatherwork’. The newcomers were involved in restoring approximately twenty pieces for the Esterházy exhibition that opened in the Museum of Applied Arts in June 1963.38 (Fig. 8) In February 1965 an exhibition of artworks from the Esterházy treasury was organized by Angéla Héjjné Détári in the ground floor gallery of the museum. (Fig. 9) In 1967, documentation was made compulsory by the then director, Mrs Mihály Weiner, but the need for continuous photography, as we have seen, had already been appreciated. 1970s As educational opportunities developed, the third generation of restorers already had college or university degrees. General restoration courses started in 1974, followed by specialized courses in 1982. Restoration of pieces from the Esterházy treasury, an enormous undertaking that has provided work for a long series of restorers with many different specializations, has now been in progress in the workshops of the Museum of Applied Arts for half a century, and since the mid-1990s it has been supported by grants from the National Cultural Fund, set up in 1993. Looking back on this activity, which has spanned several generations in the profession, we now have a clear picture of the problems that restorers faced—and still face—when they start work on a ruined item of Esterházy metalwork. 8. Detail of the 1963 Esterházy exhibition in the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts, Museum of Applied Arts, Archive 79
