Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 30. (Budapest, 2016)

Kornélia HAJTÓ: Zsolnay Pyrogranite: Tradition and Fact

.. there is list after list of the clays from around the city and places further afield, along with descriptions of experiments. He recorded the results of more than eighty experiments in his notebook in the space of six months. [...] He combed the whole area looking for raw material, constantly experimenting, ignoring nothing, and considering nothing impossible. ”4

Vilmos Zsolnay took chemistry lessons from pharmacist Tamás Nendtvich in 1871/1872 to get a better understanding of manufacturing processes.5

Unglazed architectural ceramic elements were entered under the heading “terracotta”, and each product was listed in one of the company’s Terrakotta books.6 The first architectural ceramics Zsolnay sent to Pest were for the Fechtig house in 1875. The order for ceiling tiles to be laid in Miklós Ybl’s Várkert Bazaar in 1877 marked a milestone in architectural ceramics for Zsolnay. These were products already in widespread use at the time: interlocking panels of red-fired clay with polychromie majolica glaze over white slip.7 (Fig. 3) Zsolnay took personal charge of laying the ceiling elements. The work was a great success, and prompted many prominent Budapest architects to order architectural ornaments from the company. In 1881, Imre Steindl ordered glazed ornaments for the façade of the Politechnikum in Múzeum Boulevard, taking the trouble to visit Pécs to discuss his ideas. That was the start of Vilmos’s long friendship and collaboration with Steindl. In 1884/1885 several orders were received from Vienna and other Austrian towns, and the company also supplied products to Kassa (now Kosice, Slovakia) and Budapest, in3. Fragment of a ceiling panel element from Várkert Bazaar. Photo by Klára Csáki

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