Fraternity-Testvériség, 2010 (88. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
2010-01-01 / 1. szám
Spring 2010 young, so their mother moved to the U.S. Since Mary wanted her children educated in Hungary, they remained there until they graduated. Ilonka was the first woman admitted to the Royal School of Arts and Crafts in Budapest. She held an exhibition there in 1912 and the next year left for America to join her mother. All through her life, she continued to use her maiden name but signed it as Ilona, then Ilonka and occasionally Helen. Her 21 room home was described as a real “masterpiece” as Ilonka decorated curtains, furniture and plates and designed its custom-built furniture, and it was featured in House Beautiful. Ilonka loved the Greenwich Village scene because she found it liberated her from the “Old World” prejudice she encountered in Hungary where women could not compete with men in art so she established herself in her own right as an artist of unique ability, diversity and energy. In 1914, a group of European-Amer- ican artists founded the Society of Modern Art which published the Modern Art Collector magazine in which she included designs for dress goods, theatrical posters, book illustrations, covers, advertisements, and decorative borders that were modern and extreme in style and subject. The New York department store Bonwit Teller and Company featured her advertisements so she was one of the first to apply modern design for promotional use. In 1916, she painted furniture; the first was a blanket chest similar to those in Hungary. The interior of the lid featured a brightly-colored heart sprouting a flower against a scalloped background, an image she also used on the cover of a magazine. The interior of the chest included a phrase in Hungarian: “made by Ilona Karasz with God’s help in the year 1916 in the summertime.” In 1918, she won a special prize for a black and white batik design related to a type of Hungarian needlework which demonstrated her interest in the folk arts of her native country. In 1921, she started a Hungarian theatre group. She continued contributing works to avant- garde publications, taught, studied, submitted designs to contests, exhibited works, and designed flyers and playbills. She won textile contests between 1916-1921 that allowed her to have her work manufactured. Ilonka’s primary artistic influences were from Austria and from Budapest (at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). Her work consisted of stylized natural motifs, two-dimensional patterns, simplified ornamentation, and abstract and geometric patterns influenced by Hungarian art and filled with bright colors and floral designs. She submitted images to the Hungarian-language magazine, Magyar Nő, in New York which featured her work on the cover of their July, 1927 issue. Her most successful designs occurred in the late i92o’s because this rich period included designs for interiors, furniture, silver, lighting and textiles. After the crash of‘29, she changed her focus to designing affordable modern furniture in children’s nurseries and in wallpaper. Arts and Decoration described a room of hers as the first nursery ever designed for the very modern “American child.” Her furniture was small-scale with simple shapes, primary colors, an expansive chalkboard that ran the perimeter of the room, and a puppet stage to cater to a child’s imagination. In 1928, she designed lamps, silver and more silver-plated tea sets. Ilonka realized that she had to turn her attention to more affordable designs and appeal to a middle-class market if she were to achieve further success. Nursery design was the only aspect of her career about which she wrote articles for publication, and the fact that the furniture could be used throughout a child’s early life appealed to families struggling through Depression Years. Her designs were featured at the New York World’s Fair in 1939 and at the Golden Gate International Exposition that same year. Ilonka was the only female founding member of the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen (in 1928). In 1931, the Brooklyn Museum featured a round table-cover embroidered with a backgammon board design surrounded by a floral pattern similar to those seen in Hungarian costumes. She expanded her reputation as an interior designer by working for numerous prominent New Yorkers. In the late 1920's, Karasz also worked extensively with textiles and created modern designs with new fabrics for extended uses. She experimented with new materials such as rayon so the Dupont-Rayon Company employed her in the later 1920's. In 1929, she created a striped rayon and linen fabric for automobile interiors and another fabric was used in the 1930 Fokker airplane. Her recognition grew as she created textiles both artistic and adaptable to mass manufacture. In 1935, she turned to ceramic design, and four particular plates she designed influenced contemporary patterns. From July, 1934 to February, 1937, she designed for the Buffalo China Company and created new patterns for the Broadway Limited, Pennsylvania’s finest train. In the late 1940's, Ilonka built her reputation as one of the top wallpaper designers in America. While solid, undecorated walls were still the norm in interiors, her wallpaper foreshadowed a postwar interest in patterned wall decorations, and sometimes, two or more wallpapers in a room at the same time were mixed. Even the ALCOA Company commissioned Ilonka to experiment with aluminum in order to inspire new uses for the material. In 1950, American Fabrics wrote about her, “One can picture her in the thickly-wooded forests of Hungary. Since she was born in Hungary, this may partially explain, when we consider the Tartar influence on Hungarian culture,
