Conservation around the Millennium (Hungarian National Museum, 2001)
Pages - 115
RESTORATION OF THE CASE OF A 16TH CENTURY TURKISH MIRROR OF THE ESTERHÁZY COLLECTION Tamás Peiler INTRODUCTION The uniqueness of the case (inv. no: E.72.2/b) is due to the paper constituent. Few original receptacles of goldsmiths’ works have remained in the Esterházy collection. Most of them were made by European goldsmiths usually from wood with leather covering.1 None of them had an exclusively paper structure. It is also a rarity that a Turkish case prepared together with a goldsmith’s work of Turkish origin has survived. Contemporaneity is proved by the pressed onlays on the lid, since the motifs they bear are identical with the engraved ornaments of the mirror (picture 5). HISTORICAL DATA THAT INFLUENCED THE CONDITION OF THE ESTERHÁZY COLLECTION AND THE OBJECT We do not know when the mirror and the case probably from the 16th century were incorporated in the Esterházy collection. When Miklós Esterházy (1582- 1645) the founder of the collection died, the objects of the treasury were registered. This register contains just one mirror in chest 10, with the following description: “a mirror with silver and gilded flowers”.2 This description does not help to decide if it was identical with the item have restored, which could prove that it was already at that time part of the collection.. The individual objects can more exactly be identified from the register made in 1685. Mirrors can be met at the description of the contents of chests 93 and 19, but no cases were mentioned. Entry 83 of chest 194 seems to be the most similar to the description of the Turkish mirror. The date of its production also suggests that the goldsmith’s work could have already been part of the collection at that time. The inventory of the collection in 1721 was already written in Hungarian, it is clearly legible and gives a more or less exact description of the items. Entry 3 in cupboards 19 and 205 matches the description of the mirror, but no case is mentioned, although many items were described together with their cases. None of the resisters suggest it, we can, however, suppose that the mirror was always kept in the case, but it was not estimated to be worth describing beside the valuable goldsmith’s work of an unusual shape. During World War II, the treasures were packed in chests and moved to the cellar of the Esterházy palace in the Buda Castle. A bomb hit the building and it collapsed on top of the collection, and it took three years until the treasures were rescued from under the ruins of the palace. The severely damaged treasure were temporarily conserved when they arrived in the Museum of Applied Arts, but the cases were just singled out and stored in chests. DESCRIPTION OF THE OBJECT The locker type case consisted of two parts: the lid and the bottom. It is two- lobed with a handle and a small spike facing the handle. 115
