Tüskés Anna (szerk.): Omnis creatura significans - Tanulmányok Prokopp Mária 70. születésnapjára (2009)
19-20. századi művészet
Omnis creatura significans well-heads. This paper focuses on the question what the Italian for well-head, “pozzo,” meant exactly to Schmidt. Photograph no. 237 shows a terra bianca well-head produced by the Bondi family’s Manifattura Ceramica di Signa (near to Florence) (Fig. 1). This 42 cm high well-head, which and is 46 cm in diameter, is a copy on reduced scale of the Venetian well-head preserved in the Archaeological Museum of Venice (Inv. Nr. cl. XXV-143, M. Arch. 902) (Fig. 2). Among the other pieces of the photo collection one can find some which were used in the production of garden ornaments and others which represent produced pieces. Photograph no. 8 shows a i9th-century neo-Renaissance well-head (Fig. 3) which is identical in form to the well-head in the court of the Guggenheim Museum in Venice (Fig. 4), to that in the City Museum of Bjelovar (Fig. 5) and to that of the south court of the Wartburg castle (Fig. 6). This type of well-heads was created at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the plant pots, fountains, benches and well-heads presented at the Silos exhibition garden of Schmidt and as shown on a photograph (Fig. 7), there are some identifiable pieces, for example, the well-head of the Hungarian Embassy of Vienna, or, possibly, a copy of it. The question arises what Miksa Schmidt had to do with that piece in Vienna. The eleven inventory books compiled between 1903 and 1921 give short descriptions of about 110 types of “Pozzo”s and “Brunnen”s, presumably well-heads or other garden ornaments. The words “echt” and “Original” in the inventories are deceptive. They are there more to provide a commercial appeal than in any sense useful to an art historian. Original and false well-heads presented as authentic ones cost about 1000 lira alike. A well-head marked “original” cost from 300 to 3000 crowns at Schmidt depending on the material and size. The name of the “pozzi” included: 1. its style, e.g. Greek, Roman, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance or Baroque; 2. a people like Italian and Jewish, with uncertain reference; 3. cities which perhaps relate to the supposed place of origin: Palermo, Vienna or Linz; 4. animals presumably which appear on the well-heads: lion, fox, ox, monkey or elephant; 5. Hungarian aristocratic families which refer to well-heads possessed by the given family after which the piece was made: Esterházy, Zichy or Hadik; 6. motifs represented; 7. form, number of columns, size or the future user; 8. the material: terracotta, artificial stone or plaster. Besides these materials many well-heads were made of marble, stone or cement. It seems uncertain what could the techniques of “vergoldet” and “Mosaik eingelegt” mean. Other “pozzi” appear only once in the inventories. Certain descriptions indicate a part of a “pozzo” only, and so they reveal that “pozzi” could also be bought in parts. Based on these finding it might be suggested that the Schmidt company had several hundred types of “pozzi.” Surveying the inventories and the photographs it has been found that the word “pozzo” was a collective designation for a wide range of objects from flower-stands and baptismal fonts to well-heads. The exact identification of the descriptions with existing pieces or the ones represented on photographs proved to be difficult. The Schmidt company loaned and sold these works of art and garden ornaments to the upper middle class and the aristocracy. It has also been found that through the manufacture and the commerce of “pozzi” Miksa Schmidt became associated with some foreign and Hungarian companies, for example, the Galleria Sangiorgi in Rome, the terracotta manufacture of the family Bondi in Signa and the Zsolnay factory in Pécs. 296
