Weiner Mihályné szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 12. (Budapest, 1970)

HOPP FERENC MÚZEUM — MUSÉE FERENC HOPP - Fux, Herbert: The Far Eastern Collections of the Austrian Museum for Applied Art

HERBERT FUX THE FAR EASTERN COLLECTIONS OF THE AUSTRIAN MUSEUM FOR APPLIED ART The Asiatic Art of the Austrian Museum for Applied Art in Vienna is connected at first with the world renowned carpets there. Other Islamic pieces are textiles, metals, glass, ceramic, bookcovers and the 60 sheets of the famous Hamza Romance. But the Far Eastern collections mean a very great stock of important art objects and are rich in cultural values too. The Austrian Museum for Applied Art was founded in Vienna in 1863, at that time with the name "Austrian Museum for Art and Industry". The prototype for the first Museum of this kind on the continent was the South Kensington Museum in London. Soon after the foundation the museum was interested in Asiatic art and already the first entries in the inventory include Asiatic objects. Especially in the seventies the museum made acquisitions of Chinese and Japanese porcelain and at the beginning of our centuiy a great number of Japanese wood-cuts and fragments of Chinese costumes were added to the collection. A very considerable enlargement of the collections took place in 1907 in form of purchase of Asiatic porcelain, ceramics, metalwork, textiles, carpets and colour-prints from the Austrian Museum of Trade which was established in 1886 and had succeeded the Oriental Museum. The basic collection of this Oriental Museum was formed by the objects generously donated by the Asiatic states after the closing of the Viennese World Fair in 1873, representing a great richness of material concerning the history of art. The Far Eastern department of our museum was also later on continually enlarged by purchase, by an exchange and, last but not least, by donations which represent an extraordinary development. To give a list of all the contributors and benefactors this small space would be prohibiting. In the first rank may be named the unique Exner collection bequested in 1944 and 1946. Mr. Anton Exner was an art dealer and a collector who gave the Museum more than 3000 Chinese and Japanese items collected on his Far Eastern tours. This is the history of our collection given just in a few words. Although it does not come up to the big collections in this field, it is still able to give an instinctive impression of the multilateral kinds and ways of Far Eastern Art.