Sikota Győző: Herendi porcelán (Budapest, 1970)
Idegen nyelvű összefoglalók
As shown by monuments and documents of mediaeval Hungarian settlements, the Hungarian people had always a predilection for pottery and ceramics. Pieces of pottery are frequently found in County Veszprém too, where the village of Herend is lying. In Buda Castle of King Matthias Corvinus there was a maiolica manufacture, the first in Europe outside Italy. However, the promising future of Hungarian ceramics came to naught on account of 150 years of Turkish domination. Liberated from the Turks, the country lived under the rule of the Habsburgs who repressed the industrialization of Hungary to suit all-over economical interests of their empire. In order to save the monopolistic position of the Vienna Porcelain Factory they went as far as to prevent Hungarian porcelain industry from developing and occupying the place merited by its past traditions among porcelain manufactures evolving in Europe. In the struggle for establishing Hungarian porcelain art it was only Herend which succeeded. Scientific research work started in the last decades and aiming at discovering the history of the Herend Porcelain Factory, has furnished the evidence that the manufacture was already existing in the year 1826. It belonged then to Vince Stingi. The small manufacture produced stoneware and made experiments with porcelain too. There are some of these pieces in the museum of Herend Factory, mainly plates the style of which is similar to that of contemporary 19th century stoneware and the products of the Viennese manufacture. As proved by documents, Stingi borrowed large amounts of money in the period 1825-1830 for the development of his manufacture, but the loans did not cover his requirements. So he was obliged to pass over his manufacture to one of his creditors: Mór Fischer. Fischer’s capital investment in 1839 gave the factory a new impetus. The first attempts of manufacturing porcelain were conform to the baroque taste of the fourties. Characteristic products are the Viennese Empire sets, with cobalt-blue "Ranftlmuster” patterns under the glaze. Within a short time the Herend Factory was able to produce porcelain of satisfactory quality and decoration and was soon at the level of the Viennese manufacture. The appearance of the unknown Herend porcelain on the First Hungarian Industrial Exhibition in 1842 was thus a major surprise. This success established the credit of the factory and gave it enough strength to start a production of higher quality, represented in those times by forms and decorations coming from the golden age of Meissen, Sèvres, Capo di Monte and Vienna. The new sets made in these styles and faithfully imitating the original patterns often deceived even the connoisseur. Meissen's rich gamut of colours and decorations induced several other European porcelain factories to imitate its style, but there was hardly anyone which developed it with a craftmanship comparable to that of Herend. In most cases it was only the essence of the decoration which was taken over, while the wild flowers and birds of the environment were freely adapted to create the genuine Hungarian style of Herend. This was the origin of the “Rotschild-Oiseaux” pattern and so was the “Fleurs des Indes” pattern from Meissen simplified, blended and transformed at Herend, to become the “Apponyi pattern”, still much en vogue. The influence of Sèvres porcelain was less. The mocca services with a pastoral scene in a white panel on pink and light blue ground; water fowl and golden pheasants or the “Sèvres petites roses or” are the evidence of French influence. The Oriental style appeared in the fifties, while the beginning of the sixties was marked by Hungarian folk costumes as well as by romantic and idealized genrepainting taken from Hungarian peasant life. This developed the artistic style of the golden age between 1851 and 1876 in two directions: the completion of different old sets was continued, and the inspiration of old Oriental chinaware was followed. The latter proved to be a most complex task, because there were, on the one side, the artistic requirements characteristic of the period, and, on the other side, the problems with the material. The material, the colours and the burning methods had to be worked out anew, after they had been forgotten by their discoverers, the Chinese. In “Les Arts en Europe” Countess Colonna writes as follows about this new' artistic trend of Herend: "To imitate the fine old pieces of different origin is a task which no other foreign factory has undertaken as yet". The everlasting beauty of Chinese porcelain was immortalized by the Herend products; the patterns: Victoria, Ming, Gödöllő, Cubash, Siang Noir, Poissons, Esterházy, Windsor Castle and Macao (the latter being mainly used for the decoration HEREND PORCELAIN
