Lengyel László (szerk.): Devóció és dekoráció - 18. és 19. századi korolstormunkák Magyarországon - Studia Agriensia 7. (Eger, 1987)
Summary
were partly nuns from different religious orders and because of whom the objects received the characteristic nun work title. In convent workshops they produced for example complicated flower ornaments, made from twined metal yarn, the so-called polion decorated objects and other things such as the copper-plated devotion engravings which were printed in thousands of copies and were made in regional centres or in the European centres of graphic reproduction by world artisans and workshops. Thus in both cases, in the nuns’ workshops as in graphic reproduction, this activity safeguarded a great tradition and saved the manual labour tradition for several centuries and also the objects that were made there involved craftsmanship in its best sense and immortalised it for us. Therefore, the exhibited works apart from being the documents of the religious practice of the age and signposts of a society’s mental security, might reveal the decorative inclination that prevailed two centuries ago and also mirror the manual dexterity and invention. But while the devotio moderna of the Middle Ages, that new type of piety appears in the form of works with high standards within the domain of individual belief, the objects of the period shown here generally belong to the world of applied art. Though the majority of them protect the craftsman’s tradition at a high level, nevertheless the character of their beings signifies the beginning of a process, which resulted in the definitive separation of mass culture and elite culture which is typical of the last hundred and fifty years and of our age. For the motivators of this process we must naturally look into the sphere of social changes, but they predominated in different cultural areas in different ways. Concerning the genre exhibited here it appeared when with the introduction of new materials and techniques the subject of devotion being more effectively embellished, decoration became more important and ousted the subject of devotion. This necessary lead to the emptying and flattening out of thought and forms. The exhibition reveals some of the points of this process, where from the applied art character of the religious small art objects the definition “art” will be dismissed and that function which was filled by the objects made with craftsmanship can be taken over by the products of the ecclasiastical object industry. 135
