Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 30. (Budapest, 2016)
Kornélia HAJTÓ: Zsolnay Pyrogranite: Tradition and Fact
oured, but unglazed terracotta. The figures Zsolnay produced for the Exhibition Hall are similar but with high-gloss glazes on the clothes of the figures, leaving only exposed parts of the body unglazed. (...) Concerns have often been raised against the use of terracotta in our hostile climate, especially given recent experiences in Berlin. But terracotta can withstand the adverse effects of the weather in the same way as good, hard- fired brick, and any bad experiences with it has been for want of care in choosing and firing the clay; we have had occasion to notice that some manufacturers consider every waste clay good enough for terracotta. German manufacturers are now producing hard fired terracotta similar to stoneware, and the Mettlach Company is the pioneer in this field. Mettlach terracotta is just like earthenware and its colour can imitate various kinds of stone. In Hungary, to our knowledge, only Zsolnay has experimented with making hard terracotta, and has made large terracotta items from stoneware clay. Zsolnay did not show such experimental pieces at the exhibition, it seems because manufacture of hard terracotta is not yet in regular operation. We admire the owner for sensibly exhibiting only what he makes in continuous production. (...) The use of glazed terracotta in Hungary is completely new, but Zsolnay has demonstrated on the few buildings where it has been installed that the company can satisfy every demand. The first large- scale building decorated in this way was that of the Hungarian Royal Technical University, but it the Exhibition Hall featured at the exhibition best displays the capabilities of the Pécs company, which can compete in this field with any foreign company. Among Zsolnay’s latest works are fittings for Máriafalva Church, whose altar, pulpit, etc. are made of glazed terracotta. ”2S We do indeed find foreign examples of architectural ceramics fired to higher density, comparable to keramit. The Museum of Applied Arts purchased a pavilion from the 1900 Paris World Fair in which the French ceramicist Alexandre Bigot (1862-1927) had exhibited his architectural ceramics.29 Bigot’s products, which can still be seen on art nouveau buildings in Paris, are considerably denser than Zsolnay products (see table). It is reasonable to suppose, however, Zsolnay’s endeavours to increase weather resistance were not aimed at increasing density. Since samples taken from different buildings and made in different periods do not show any trend to greater density, we can completely reject dense firing as a definitive feature of Zsolnay architectural ceramics. The weather resistance of ceramic products is not inversely relate to their porosity. This is a frequent error, as can be demonstrated by the fact that roof tiles are made of porous material. László Mattyasovszky-Zsolnay (1912— 1992), great-grandson of Vilmos, was a Kossuth Prize winning chemical engineer and worked in the Pest and Pécs factories. He produced the two-volume Handbook of Fine Ceramics30 in 1953/1954, which is still one of the major Hungarian reference books on the subject. In the chapter “Frost resistant architectural ceramics - Pyrogran- ite”, he wrote: “Ceramic materials can be divided into three groups by frost resistance. The first comprises definitely frost-resistant, dense 130
