Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 18. (Budapest, 1999)

Zsuzsa H. BOGNÁR: About the Dining Room in the Buda Palace of Count Tivadar Andrássy - apropos of an armchair

ZSUZSA H. BOGNÁR ABOUT THE DINING ROOM IN THE BUDA PALACE OF COUNT TIVADAR ANDRÁSSY - APROPOS OF AN ARMCHAIR The chairs in the Andrássy dining room - which have been dealt with many times in various publications - have been regarded by experts to be Rippl-Ronai's own designs, like many other objects "supplementing" the suite of furniture. In connection with one of the chairs recently acquired by the Museum of Applied Arts (it features in the "New Acquisitions" section of this issue), the present author would like to contribute to this debate. In the Andrássy dining room interior photographed from different angles, there were such, or similar, so-called Windsor chairs around the slightly stylized dining table designed by Rippl-Rónai/ Even in the casual observer the classicist shape of the chairs, and from the point of view of craftsmanship, their more complex structure, arouse suspicion, not to mention the lathe-turned parts which, even in a "Thékian interpretation", accord with none of the other pieces in the suite. As a result of Endre Thék's linear, stabilizing "intervention" the furniture lost its dynamism and its organic character, although we know that in Art Nouveau the wildest ideas - and ones often at variance with the material employed - frequently came to fruition in the hands of good craftsmen.

2 Admittedly, Rippl kept in mind English and Viennese models, whose more restrained style was closer to his concise, penetrating approach/ Although his "wilfulness" is well known - Rippl invariably did things his own way, expressing his own ideas using his own means, as he thought fit - he always worked in the service of progress/ "If we observe the material closely, we can depict any theme in an authentic way", László Moholy Nagy says somewhere. This deserves attention, but it was not an approach characteristic of Rippl. He was an artist, a painter par excellence, who started out from an idea, a thought, when planning an interior.

5 Here too, as always, he looked for the substance of things, the essence, even in fleeting beauty, the unchanging essence. In the centre is the table, with its overwhelming extent recalling some enormous tree; while the small objects - the glasses and ceramic objects - reinforce the concept by recalling a piece of Nature in a confined space; they do not emphasize utility, but rather lightness and airiness. They accord with the purpose of the furniture, and are not unconditionally independent pieces, although they do have their own character. The whole suite is unified by the light coming down through the ceiling, which gives it the impression of hovering slightly, and the cloud motifs make it "mysterious" - "religious" to use Rippl's term. Because of this it is impressionistic, in accordance with the time of day or year. Ultimately the aim was to recall - in this milieu, in the greyness of