Szabó István szerk.: Városi polgárok a századelőn (A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok Kiállításvezetői, 1999)

Katalin Gulyás: Civil home - civil way of life at the turn of the century

would suggest. Their way of life had been fixated and refined for generations; this was reflected in the interior design of their homes and the every day objects they used. The majority of the exhibited porcelain objects was manufactured in Bohemian factories. From the beginning of the 19

th century they imitated the products of empire and later the neo-baroque and neo-rococo style forms and patterns of Vienna china industry. They designed their cheap and good quality products specifically for the civil population. Their main characteristics are the rich and good quality aurification, fair painting, exuberant colouration, landscapes and genre paintings. The most famous china factories were in Karlsbad and in the neighbouring Schlaggenwald, Klösterle, Giesshübl, Pirkenhammer, Altrohlau, Elbogen and Aich, and they mainly produced sale-work. The most entire dinner-service of the Kontsek-collection (originally for 12 people) can be seen on the table, in the buffet and on the dresser of the dining room at the exhibition. The tableware was made in the Klösterle china factory founded by Prince Thun between 1850 and 1860. China factories and glasshouses around Karlsbad utilising the flourishing tourist trade of the frequented health-resort introduced a new type of vessel: they started to produce and sale drinking and „memory" glasses adorned with pictures and epigraphs in great quantities. Among the oldest pieces of our collection are the products of the Vienna china manufactory, the charming rococo figurines are quite well known. The Youth Spraying Flowers dates back to 1843, the late, declining age of the factory. It was originally designed to be a knick-knack, while the cup with gilded inside showing the arrowing Amor (1821), the coffee-pot and cup decorated with fig-leaves and ornamental foliage (1832-33) and the cup adorned with landscape (1832) incarnated from the last surviving pieces of biedermeier tea-sets to the most valued treasures of the china-closet. They carry all the important stylistic garnish of the Metternich age Vienna porcelain ware. The classicist conduct sugar-basin that forms an ancient urn emerged from the hands of a Meissen craftsman in 1800. The group called Hunter with hound and the statuette depicting a sitting puli (an ancient Hungarian sheep-dog) arose from the late and artistically feeble period of the factory (mid or late 19

th century). One characteristic of china-ware made in Berlin was that the maker put innocent jocular inscriptions on the objects; the gilded cup with white glaze exhibited here (around 1840) shows a salutation of the host and his family (Für den Hausherrn!) The faience tray made at Wallerfangen Villeroy & Boch factory in the second half of the 1800's is adorned with a sepia coloured decalcomania showing a dining family. The curios of the Kontsek collection are the glass works manufactured in the Murano (Venice) Salviati workroom, they are exhibited on the central shelves of the glass ware cabinet. The glass industry of Murano, which was declining in the first half of the 19

th century, started to wake up in the 1850's. The winged beakers, the chalices and vases forming snakes, and other glassware made at the Salviati workroom, which was founded in 1859 made at a hit at the 1862 London, and at the 1867 Paris international exhibitions. These pieces called forth the traditions of the 17 century style, and the success they made perfectly embodied the romantic and reminiscent taste of the period. Their pieces represented new idioms against the Czech, German and Austrian glasswork factories, whose products were thick, beamy and facetted, they called it „crystal style". 47