Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 24. (Budapest, 2006)

Györgyi FAJCSÁK: Exibition of Oriental Arts, 1929 - Collecting Chinese artefacts in Hungary in the 1920s and 1930s

art. All over Europe, collectors (in close relationship with museums, often with the help of museum experts) regularly exhibited their objects. Representative exhibitions of the material of Oriental private collections were arranged in 1925 in Amsterdam and in Paris, in 1927 in Cologne, in 1928 in Vienna,

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" in 1929 in Berlin and Budapest.

21 The exhibitions centred around early Chinese ceramics; however, early Chinese bronzes and jade objects were given more and more attention, too. Collectors rarely travelled; they obtained artefacts from art dealers in their native country and in European cities.

22 The role of art dealers underwent a change; their knowledge was more recognised. Among the well-known art-dealer companies Bluett & Sons, Yamanaka & Co. and Spink & Son dealt with works of Oriental art; in Paris, those interested could visit the shops of Marcel Bing, L. Wannieck and C.T. Loo. Besides the art dealers in London, those in Berlin were the most well-known in Europe; therefore, it is by no means accidental that in the 1920s and 1930s Berlin became a centre of Oriental art trade.

23 Edgar Worch (1880-1972) and Otto Burchard (1892-1965) opened their shops there. Burchard settled in Beijing in the 1930s and became a prominent personality of the art trade of Beijing. The growing importance of the art dealers' role is indicated by the fact that their material was displayed at high-standard exhibitions;

24 it will suffice to mention but one example. Between the two World Wars, the most remarkable event of the European history of collecting Chinese artefacts was the Exhibition of Chinese Art (arranged in London, in the winter of 1935—1936). It was the first time that works of art arrived from China, to be more precise, from the imperial collection. The exhibition, which was arranged in the Burlington House,

25 was the merit of the members of the Oriental Ceramic Society; however, all prominent collectors and collections from America to Japan participated. This exhibition gave a summary of the West's knowledge on Chinese art. It displayed excellent works of Chinese art from the beginnings to the end of the 18

,h century, asserting the governing ideas of the Chinese view of art. It assigned a considerable importance to ancient bronze ceremonial vessels, early ceramics and paintings. The Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts in Budapest and interest in the Orient in Hungary between the two World Wars After World War I, in 1919, "Ferenc Hopp donated his valuable collection of more than 4,000 works

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'' of Far-Eastern art to the Hungarian state by will. To house the collection, he gave his villa at 103 Andrássy Street to the state during his lifetime, his only stipulation being that this collection, along with the other works of Far-Eastern art would constitute a museum that bears his name. Thus, the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts was established, which then was united with the Museum of Fine Arts under a common management." 27 The first director of the museum and the organizer of the collection was Zoltán Felvinczi Takács. He contributed to the enrichment of the Hopp collection with advice from the 1910s and in 1914 he published the collection in the Magyar Iparművészet.

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* Felvinczi envisaged a historically based enrichment of the collection, as Hopp's collection "was not a museum but merely laid the foundation of a museum. As far as several major fields of the Far Eastern art are concerned, his collection was incomplete..."he wrote in 1939, recalling the beginnings.

29 While investigating Chinese art, Felvinczi Takács relied on German and English technical literature as well as on German and English private collections. Above all, he was influenced by Otto Kümmel és Albert von LeCoq. Kümmel (1874-1952), the first director of the Oriental museum in Berlin turned Felvinczi Takács 's attention to the aesthetic aspects of collecting. It was due to Kümmel's influence that he aspired to provide the Oriental museum in Budapest with a collection that would give special aspects to its material. In Kümmel's definiton, this collection was constituted by early Chinese bronzes.

30 In Zoltán Felvinczi