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
prince's consorts, Mary Krisztierna Habsburg and Katalin Brandenburg, whose dowries and, in the case of Katalin Brandenburg, purchases, brought fashionable and elegant pieces to Transylvania. Both of these women, however, left the country later in life and so there was not enough time for their costumes and jewellery to exert a broad influence. The provenance and spread of forms and decorations of silver tableware were naturally not a function of political-military borders. It is striking how similar designs appear in areas subject to different rule, reflecting close trading and economic links. One explanation for this is the large-scale movement of craftsmen from the occupied territory to more peaceful areas, becoming members of the Kassa (Kosice), Nagybánya (Baia Mare), Nagyvárad (Oradea), Kolozsvár (Cluj) and Debrecen guilds. The distinctive Hungarian form of the cup is what is now known as a "footed cup". Ida Bobrovszky, in a study of metalwork in market towns of the territory occupied by the Turks convincingly identified the udvari pohár (court cup) referred to in 17 th century sources as the footed cup form. Hallmarked pieces have been identified as originating in the occupied territory, Upper Hungary, the Partium and Transylvania. Mentioned a great many times in the sources, this type survived as a communion table vessel in Reformed Churches, mostly in areas inhabited by Magyars. It was not adopted into the South Transylvania Lutheran liturgical paraphernalia, but was used as a vessel of neighbourhoods and guilds. The heaviest — and therefore the most ostentatious — items of silverware were toilet sets. Such pieces are found only in aristocratic inventories, usually as the first item. Jugs of various kinds were also considered highly prestigious. Silver jugs had been part of tableware since the Middle Ages. Most of the types used in 16 th-17 th century Hungary and Transylvania also displayed a South German influence. An essential difference is that while most German, Scandinavian and Polish-Baltic examples were drinking vessels, the sources and surviving pieces show that these lidded, handled vessels were mainly used for storing liquids. Research in Hungary - principally in the second half of the 20th century — almost completely overlooked Transylvanian goldsmiths work made to order for Romanian princes in the final decades of the 17 th century and the first three decades of the next century. Most of these came from Brassó (Bra§ov) and a few from Nagyszeben (Sibiu). They were largely vessels, book covers and lamps used in the Eastern Christian liturgy, but also included some distinctively Transylvanian and Hungarian artefacts, mostly in the earlier period. In Transylvania, the Saxon Lutheran congregations and cities had local products of similar standard in the late 17 th century. Artefacts of the Apafi Era made for Transylvania court customers are distinctive for their narrow range of techniques, styles and ornamentation, and imposing dimensions. Another interesting feature was the appearance in court use of a type formerly found only among commoners. By the end of the 17 th century the prince's court no longer built its luxury goods mechanism on the work of city craftsmen; its role was taken over by the two Romanian princes and their courts. In metalware produced for them, a unique form of decoration in which modelled, naturalistic floral elements are "spiced up" with Late Gothic details lived on up to the 1730s.
