Mikó Árpád – Verő Mária - Jávor Anna szerk.: Mátyás király öröksége, Késő reneszánsz művészet Magyarországon (16–17. század) 2. kötet (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2008/4)
The English Summary of Volumes I—II
ANNA RIDOVICS HABAN CERAMICS IN THE 17 TH CENTURY The Habans, an Anabaptist community of primarily German extraction, and known most commonly at the time as "New Christians", represented a popular branch of the radical Reformation. The New Christians were famous for the high level of skill and their industriousness in crafts, agriculture and medicine. The written sources record 30 different trades in which they were active. Besides the potters, there were Haban knifemakers, tanners, weavers, millers and builders. It was in the first half of the 16th century that the Anabaptist doctrines and their representatives appeared in scattered parts of historical Hungary, by then split into three parts. The first communities settled in the Trencsén (Trencin), Nyitra (Nitra) and Pozsony (Bratislava) areas in the mid-16th century. In royal Hungary, the aristocrats who received the banished refugees were ordered by the king to remove the sectarians from their estates. Nonetheless, the Protestant aristocrats showed some tolerance to the Anabaptists, despite religious differences, and even Catholic aristocrats showed an interest in their high-standard work and products. The Anabaptist communities faced increasing difficulties in the second half of the 17 th century. In West Hungary, they still had flourishing villages on the Batthyánys' estate around 1640, but Ádám Batthyány showed no tolerance. László Esterházy esteemed their work, but Palatine Pál Esterházy ordered them off his estates around 1660. They were forced northwards, to Nagyiévárd (Veiké Leváre), Szobotist (Sobotiste) and Kosztolna. Ceramics are the best-known physical relic of the Habans' work. In the late 16th century, the New Christians added white tin-glazed faience to their traditional lead-glazed ware. The new technique had been brought by refugees from North Italy who joined their co-religionists in Moravia. The Haban communities made their own pots as part of their efforts towards self-sufficiency. In the beginning they probably made decorated pieces even for their own use. In 1588, rules were introduced preventing potters from making pots for themselves without permission. The 1612 rules (Gostl) called upon the brethren to hand in their valuable pots and their splendid knives. Until then, people had worked for their own benefit, occasionally selling what they made at fairs. In the 17 th century, the Haban craftsmen principally made decorated wares for high noble Hungarian families. A major family event, like a christening or a wedding, was a good occasion for ordering magnificent tableware items or sets from Haban craftsmen. Starting in the second half of the 17 th century, the use of Haban pots spread among wealthier lesser nobles, burghers and town bodies. Ornate guild vessels were also made in Haban workshops. The New Christian faience ware also served as church accoutrements, such as communion vessels. The Habans were the prime exponents and propagators of faience-making in Central-Eastern Europe. This was fine ware made with tin glaze and involved different techniques of production and decoration than traditional lead-glazed pottery. The organisation of the work may be deduced from the Potters' Rules (Hafnerordnung) and contemporary chronicles. These sought to eliminate individual initiatives, separate work and self-made raw materials, from which it may be deduced that potters were always attempting to get round these prohibitions. Production involved a prescribed division of labour: some mixed the clay and supervised firing, and others shaped the pots, prepared and the glazes, and glazed and decorated the pots. Some built stoves and made stove tiles, while others made pots, jugs and ewers. No craftsman's marks are to be found on their wares. The work was regarded as the product of the community, and competition was to be avoided. Craftsman's marks only started to appear in the second half of the 18 th century. Form and style features of various origins - mainly Italian, German, Netherlandish, East Persian/Turkish — were combined in the distinctive New Christian style of pottery. The formal vocabulary followed a strict tradition which drew mainly on Italian and Northern Renaissance pottery types but was reconstituted into the unique system of Haban ware. It was very common in the early period to include the owners' monograms and coats of arms in the decoration, and there are also later examples. The sophistication of Habans' literary culture also had an influence on their decorative art, which was dominated by Italian Renaissance ornamentation and oriental, Persian-Turkish floral motifs. The floral motifs were often applied with free brushstrokes in manganese glaze, most often in axially symmetrical bunches of three or five arranged on a single stalk or formed into a winding tendril. The colour of the petals and leaves was then painted on, or a single line was drawn across the outlines. A stylus was also used to make thicker lines. The New Christian faith prohibited anthropomorphic or zoomorphic representation, a constraint which only began to relax in the second half of the 17 th century. The Habans started to include human and animal figures and buildings on their ware in the 1660s, after they became less strictly bound to their settlements. A new style developed in the 18th century as the formal vocabulary, colour scheme and decoration gradually changed, the decoration covering more and more of the surface area. Pottery of the Late Haban or Post-Haban period has an increasingly vulgar character, and as potters became more autonomous and formed into guilds, their art fertilised both folk and artistic pottery.
