Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 32. (Budapest, 2018)
Piroska NOVÁK: On the porcelain designer career of Éva Ambrus
where the results of the Kitchen Program for Prefabricated Houses—over 400 different objects—were shown. The service included a tea and coffee set as well as a dinner set, with numerous pieces performing various functions, thereby minimizing the total number of pieces. Here, too, the forms were rounded, yet still stackable, allowing space for other kitchenware to be stored in the cupboard. A decorative decal was also made for Éva Ambrus’s tableware set, designed not by her but by textile designer Zsuzsa Péreli and graphic designer László Zsótér.20 (Fig. 8—10.) Despite the encouraging developments and tremendous amount of work invested, the Kitchen Program for Prefabricated Houses unfortunately remained just an experiment: only a small percentage of the prototypes were mass produced. Éva Ambrus felt the reason the program had failed in the Alföld Porcelain Factory was that, regardless of all the efforts of the organizers, they could not excite enough interest among the heads of the factory.21 In 1976-77, the UNISET-212 food service set was conceived using almost identical design methods to those employed in the Kitchen Program for Prefabricated Houses.22 The service was designed by a ‘value engineering team’ that united a designer with experts in technology, economics and commerce23 for entry in the Value Engineering competition announced by the National Committee for Technological Development. Here, too, the design process began with collecting information and assessing needs, for which the department of market research and organization at the Karl Marx University of Economics devised a survey that was delivered to food service establishments in Budapest and the countryside: ‘The informational material the department prepared included the form of porcelain dishware used, the size, decoration, space and washing requirements, and a study of the procurement possibilities. At the end was a proposal for market organization based on a summary of experiences.’24 After the answers and consumer demands were evaluated, guiding principles for the design of the various pieces were drafted using the methods of function analysis, which also greatly aided in systematizing the requirements for multi-functional use. These considerations were recorded on worksheets for determining goals. As Éva Ambrus stated: ‘We strove to create a rational, complete set of porcelain dishes consisting of as few pieces as possible that would nevertheless perform all functions. By taking all this into consideration, we assembled a set of requirements that included all the functional and aesthetic elements related to the development of a family of products.’25 The method of value engineering itself meant that the manufacturing conditions for the cost-effective production of each piece in the set were planned and carefully counted. Éva Ambrus determined the system of proportions and the basic forms of the entire set—which included the coffee, tea and dinner services—based on the considerations recorded on the above-mentioned goal-setting worksheets; then the design collective together evaluated her proposal. In this way, the fundamental concept of the module system and the shape was finalized, with Ambrus and the design collective settling on: ‘a basic cylinder shape and its divisions according to surfaces that fit together functionally. In order to resolve the somewhat mechanical quality arising from the underlying cylin112
