Tóth Vilmos: Funeral Art - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2006)

Funeral Arts in the 19th Century

The foremost firm specialising in funeral masonry and tombstone retail in Pest was established in 1847 and reached the height of its reputation under the management of Béla Gerenday, son of the founder Antal Ge- renday. Most of the company’s work, whose quality was regarded as a trade benchmark in Hungary, was made in the 19th century; the majority of their surviving pieces can be found in Kerepesi út Cemetery. At the zenith of its operations, the Gerenday workshop accepted hundreds of commissions for individual and serial products alike, keeping abreast of the changing fashions of Romanticism, Eclecticism and even of Art Nouveau later. The company also kept pace with growing demands for impressiveness and sculptural decoration in funeral design from the 1880s on, and credit is largely due to the Gerendays for the increasing use of high-quality materials in funeral masonry. Several tombstone-carving workshops were active in the Pest-Buda, and then Budapest, of the 19th century, for example those of the Kauser, Schmidt and Seenger families. Monuments attesting to their

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I Márton Lendvay's sepulchre from the Cerenday workshop