Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 18. (Budapest, 1999)
New acquisitions 1998
choice of name, too. On the other hand, the recognition and responsibility that at the end of the 20th century, when machines and the mass-produced products made by them, are incapable of creating the intimate atmosphere of personality, someone has to accept the risk of reshaping our utility artefacts and confronting convention. The material with which we work is porcelain, which requires of its user respect for its properties, discipline and quality work. I can compare the process of creating our services and individual pieces can be compared to the birth of a sonnet, replete with constraints and strict rules," says Pálma Babos in her summary of the group's aims on De-Forma's fanfold brochure. With its bizarre scintillatingly jocular playfulness, Kádasi 's tête-à-tête service is a creation entirely different from the customary and conventional design. It preserves only the essence of the objects; the shapes are completely new, but at the same time present the characteristics of the material: lightness, pliability and fineness. The seeming fragility of the service is in fact a series of well thought out solutions: the jugs and the cups rest on three supports, and the handles of the cups are specially shaped for the fingers and thumb, this assisting use. The (lumbering, teeming...) coffee things assembled on the tray, which has a border of concave and convex curves, come to life, the horn shapes recalling tiny animals, beasts with legs and little tails, the aperture of the milk jug shaped like a gaping mouth, and the twin spouts on the coffee jug all represent inventiveness and innovation. The service unintentionally recalls the legendary Beatles film Yellow Submarine. Through recent purchases of contemporary material mainly decorative pieces have entered the Ceramics Collection, along with pieces representing autonomous art, but utility pieces and services only seldom. Éva Kádasi 's service is an autonomous and utility creation, and is at the same De-Forma's first work to feature in our Collection.
