Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 28. (Budapest, 2012)

Diána RADVÁNYI: The Early Products and Brief History of the Porcelain Factory of Regéc

against a background of dense grayish green dots. The colours are pink and lemon yellow for the flowers and birds, brown for the twigs, green for the leaves; the former are outlined in grayish green, the latter in black. This colour scheme fits perfectly the grayish green ground, and the spacing of the ornaments is also excellent. The jug shows the influence of the English chinoiserie rather than the direct effect of Chinese porcelain. This is the only known piece of this style among the Regéc ceramics, unique in style and quality, particularly for its date of 1835. The unity of form and painted decoration disproves the presumption that it was decorated at a later date. During Gyula Fiedler's directorship Czech porcelain was most influential: the services in neo-baroque style are exactly like their Czech prototypes in both form and decoration. Since Fiedler produced these vessels, most of them dinnerware, from relatively early, the beginning of the 1860s, it was not so much copying as the application of the fashionable style of the period. Telkibánya also influenced the products of factories nearby, owing directly to the migration of workers and indirectly to copying, emulating some products. The latter can be exemplified by two pieces in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts: the earlier one is a paper-weight of 1838, a fine example of small sculpture which had a relatively high rate among the Regéc ceramics, (fig. 3) The figure is a wolf-like dog sitting on an oblong base. The ground colour is the grayish porcelain with brown painting and green foliage on the base. The form recurs on the handle of a tobacco jar made at Szilvás, also in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts (inv. no. 7228 ab). In the majolica piece of Szilvás the animal figure is somewhat larger and less subtly elaborated. It was cast and certainly later than the Regéc paper-weight. The question is whether it is a copy or both were created on the basis of a common model. 3. Paper-weight, 1838 (MA A inv. no. 56.1530.1) Working method, material use, quality In the Breczenheim period production went on mainly manually and in small editions, so it is more correct to speak of a manufacture rather than a factory. The handles, spouts, plastic ornaments were attached to the cylindrical bodies - jugs, cups, pots - by hand. The plates with relief patterns in the bowls reveal that the ceramic body was pressed into the mould by hand. Studying the deviations of similar forms one is led to presume that sometimes the shaping of the object was on the wheel although the mould would have been far simpler. A later group of objects clearly reveal that they were produced mechanically. In ceramic production kaolin from local mines was also used which accounts for the grayish green hue; this body not used anywhere else was not regarded as porcelain by 82