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

Edit DARABOS: Altera Theca continens.A Research Into Historical Leather Cases made for Esterhazy Treasury Items

15. Cases for jewellery sets and coins. Photograph by Antal Weinwurm, taken at the Historical Section of the National Millennium Exhibition of 1896. The cases are kept in Forchtenstein

Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest, Archive, FLT 2283

point between the 1650s and 1670s, and can be linked to Augsburg. Naturally, the time range established with the help of the tendril-patterned cases from Augsburg is not necessarily a guide to the date or circumstances of the arrival of the items in the treasury. Analogues that may appear in the future may help to determine an even more precise date when the cases were made. Nevertheless, this group is significant and noteworthy, because there is as yet no other group of cases anywhere (including in foreign collections) that consists of such a high number of exemplars, except for groups that were made for a specific treasury, such as the group of cases made for the treasury of Louis de Bourbon.

An examination of the cases clearly established that numerous cases must have been in the possession of the treasury at the time the inventory was taken around 1685. There were almost certainly cases belonging to the group of tendril-patterned cases from Augsburg that held the cup-shaped objects listed in the inventory of around 1685. (Fig. 14) The will Paul Esterházy made in 1664 refers to an unspecified number of jasper bowls, while the series of inventories in question mentions 6-8 such items, and later records include many more, numbering in their dozens (mostly made of precious stones), the majority of which are listed together with their cases. The treasury in Forchtenstein today houses about

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