Földes Mária: Ornamentation - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)

his arms thrown apart. To the left of the throne we can recognize scenes of the 1848 Revolution and War of Independence. We can see Pál Vasvári’s and István Széchenyi’s features among the members of a group. Kossuth’s face is believed to be near a peasant boy waving a flag and a young woman holding her baby. The ermine robe of Our Lady is held by putti fluttering around her.

The mosaic is an unforgettable sight, especially when the sun is shining and the burning colours blend into the glittering background of gold to form one large vibrating spectacle. It makes an enormous impression on the viewer, even if it is impossible to make out the details from a distance. Originally, there was a statue of Atlas on the top, holding a luminous globe on his back. Regrettably, the ornament was destroyed in World War 11, but despite this the Turkish Bank is something special and beautiful.

We can find another trend-setting sample of architecture in Szervita tér, one which also has a determining effect on the cityscape. This office and apartment block (no. 5 Szervita tér), whose ground floor is occupied by the Rózsavölgyi Music Shop, was designed by Béla Lajta for his father in 1911. Unfortunately, the shop’s unique and wonderful wooden furniture, designed by Lajos Kozma, has been destroyed. Both the interior and the exterior of the building were fashioned in the “Lajta” style, which represents modern Hungarian architecture. The consistent, nobly proportioned facade suggests sincerity through its simplicity. The three shopfronts on the ground floor make up a large surface of glass framed in a large metal moulding with a coloured, inlaid, ceramic frieze of stylized motifs. The residential level is marked off along the width of the building by a string-course adorned and set off by a pattern similar to the one on the frieze. The wall above is covered with white glazed bricks, on which the row of coloured motifs is repeated four times over in the form of narrow ribbons. The building is crowned with a row of balconies, the equivalent of a cornice, while the base repeats the yellow-red ceramic ornamentation. These stringcourses repeating folklore motifs, which are not too concrete yet, create a typically Hungarian impression and serve the purpose of horizontally articulating the building.

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