Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 25. (Budapest, 2007)

Zsolt SOMOGYI: Pál Horti's Late Works in the United States of America

od from the 1850s until the 1920s (and possibly even to 1939) are seen as a single process. In it are listed the achievements of the Glasgow school, Jugendstil in Germany, Sezession in Vienna, and the Wiener Werkstátte. This view was strengthened by the exhibition entitled The Arts & Crafts Movement in Europe & America’ staged at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2004,18 and also by the show entitled ‘International Arts and Crafts’ organised at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2005.19 These two exhibitions presented works from the Hungarian Secession period by Károly Kós, Ede Thoroczkay Wiegand, Géza Maróti, János Vaszary, the Gödöllő Artists’ Colony, Béla Lajta, and Miksa Róth, to name just some. These artists they listed among the movement’s representatives.

In the United States of America, the Arts & Crafts Movement achieved extraordinary popularity, not least because the British achievements were very close to American handicrafts traditions and furniture styles. In the United States, Arts & Crafts products were made until as late as the 1920s. It is characteristic of the spread of the movement that (to give one example) L. C. Tiffany, most of whose output is more reflective of the lightness of French Art Nouveau than it is of the forms of the Arts & Crafts movement, is, on the basis of some of his works, likewise ranked among the masters of the latter trend.20 Two outstanding, world-famous representatives of Modernist endeavours in America were Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959) and Gustav Stickley (1858-1942). They and many other designers and furniture producers made the formal solutions of the movement their own. While in the United Kingdom advocates of the Arts & Crafts Movement spoke out against factory production and the use of machinery, applied artists in the USA

accepted and even urged the use of machinery and mass production. They did so for business reasons primarily, but there was even an ideology in support of this view: ‘When rightly used, the machine is simply a tool in the hands of a skilled worker, and in no way detracts from his work’ (Gustav Stickley).21 It was in such an environment that Horti designed his American furniture.

Leaving aside the designs for a grand piano and an upright piano, six pieces of furniture known from the sketchbook - a version of the ‘Morris chair’, and armchair, a lectern, a small bookcase, a ‘writing shelf, and a ‘cellarette’ (drinks cabinet) - follow American traditions from the point of view of forms. What sets them apart from the works of American competitors is their use of characteristic motifs by way of embellishment. Most American designers were happy to stress the simple beauty of the wood. However, Horti, in accordance with West European and Hungarian traditions, was pleased to use inlay on his furniture, stylised flower motifs first and foremost. From the inscriptions he placed next to his furniture designs, it turns out that he even experimented with Indian (i.e. Native American) motifs: the geometrical embellishments on the upright piano fitted in wonderfully well with the Arts & Crafts idea of seeking ‘pure sources’ and with the American taste of the time.

The inscriptions on the drawings contain other important data also. This information leads us to pieces of furniture that Horti went on to make. Six proper names feature in it: St. Louis, New York, Grand Rapids- Michigan (sic), Cincinnati, Charles Limbert, and Oscar Onken. The first four indicate cities where Horti stayed during his time in the USA, while the last two denote factories and enterprises with which the artist established contact.

Charles P. Limbert (1854-1923) was the

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