Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 23. (Budapest, 2004)

Diary of Events 2003

County showed works for two weeks in an exhibition opened by Dr. Miklós Bendzsel, president of the Hungarian Patent Office. In 2003 forty-eight countries staged the increasingly popular Days of Cultural Heritage on 20-21 September under the patronage of the European Council. On these days historic buildings under protection can be seen free of charge which otherwise charge for the entrance or are closed to the public. In Hungary, the 175th anniversary of Vilmos Zsolnay

's birth was the apropos of the event entitled "Zsolnay building ornaments", as the majority of the external ceramic decorations of public buildings and private houses built around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries were manufactured in his factory in Pécs. One of these buildings is the Museum of Applied Arts itself, thus the program was centered around the building. In the morning children's program "Colours, forms, house ornaments" objects were made with copies of the decorating motifs of the building. In the afternoon, Éva Csenkey guided the visitors around the building sections normally closed to the public, followed by a lecture with slides by Tamás Mattyasovszky-Zsolnay proving how versatile Zsolnay's architectural ceramic output was. János Lehoczky, master of artistic ironwork decorated with awards of merit several times celebrated his 60th birthday in 2003. In his oeuvre of pieces connected to architecture (gates, entrance and ornamental gratings, partitions, candelabra, etc.) the spontaneous functional ism of the archaic craft is harmoniously combined with the architectonic approach of modem object design. He has restored several historical iron objects, most recently three gates of the Grasham Palace in Art Nouveau style. His exhibition "The Metamorphoses of Iron" was opened by sculptor Ádám Farkas, rector of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. Large photos, 1:1 scale drawings and original works acquainted the visitors with the entire lifework in the exhibition open from 5 November to 14 December. A representative album was also published for the occasion. Antal Szeróvay, a retired architect, has been collecting various building toys for a long time. In recent decades, his interest has focussed on Lego, from which he has built proportionate models of various Budapest buildings. In December, his most recent work, the model of the St Francis church in Bakáts square, Budapest, the phases of its constructon, and photos of his earlier Lego buildings could be seen for a month in the showing of "Building bricks - once and to-day", together with models built from Anker stone-blocks. The last temporary exhibition of the year - a showing of works by the winners of the Hungarian Design Award 2003 presented by the Hungarian Patent Office - was opened on 9 December by professor István Lengyel. Judit Pataki