Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 31. (Budapest, 2017)

Veronika SZILÁGYI: Rebirth of the Gundel Centrepiece: Methodological Experiments in the Restoration of Enamelled Metalwork

features a six-branched candelabrum, while in the circular holders, instead of the columns, there are now five spherical enamelled, filigree decorations. This change (replacement or supplementation), which places greater emphasis on practical function, was probably effectuated by the centrepiece’s later owner, János Gundel (1844- 1915). The work was entrusted to the original manufacturer, the Bachruch Silverware Factory, as verified by the maker’s mark on the piece. We do not know why or when the change of ownership took place, for no records or other data pertaining to this transaction have yet come to light, although it presumably happened in the interwar years, probably after Lánczy’s death in 1921. As the property of the Gundel family, the centrepiece would likely have been used as a prestigious table decoration for celebrations and other special occasions.

This representative piece of silverware was exhibited at the National Exhibition in Pécs in 1907, the year when it was made, in the pavilion of the Bachruch Silverware Factory. In the report printed in the newspaper Vasárnapi Újság, however, it was not this piece that was singled out for praise, but the other of the two outstanding works by Károly Bachruch that were on display: a group of silver statues depicting the triumph of Mercury, commissioned by the management of the Flungarian Commercial Bank of Pest to mark the 25th jubilee of the bank’s director, Fülöp Weisz (1859-1942).7

The next chapter in the history of the centrepiece opened in 1963, when the Gundel Restaurant donated the piece to the Museum of Applied Arts.8 Since then, a number of minor restorations and enamel replacements have taken place, although there is no documentation concerning who carried out these interventions or when.

The producer: the Bachruch Silverware Factory

Relatively little is known about this company, despite it being one of the most productive and highly acclaimed silverware factories in the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth centuries. Its earliest foundations date back to the first third of the nineteenth century. At the start of his career, Albert Bachruch (?—1869), a silversmith from the Moravian town of Raud- nitz (now Roudnice nad Labem, Czechia), produced silver smoking pipe caps in his workshop in Selmecbánya (now Banská Stiavnica, Slovakia), which he sold in Vienna. In 1826 he settled in Pest, where he opened a shop (in Miatyánk utca). After his death, the workshop was taken over by one of his sons, Károly (1851-1925), who not only produced silverware but also jewellery. Albert’s sons, who followed him into the same profession, later settled in Paris.

Károly Bachruch studied in Pest and Paris, and also spent time in England, France and Belgium. After taking over the workshop, he expanded it greatly, transforming it into an industrial-scale enterprise.9 He continued to use, unchanged, the name of the company that his father had founded, the A. Bachruch Silverware Factory (Bachruch A. Ezüstárugyár).10 In the 1880s, the production site of what was now a shareholding company was moved into a residential apartment block at number 13, Királyi Pál utca. His company, which by 1903 employed 120 workers, made Károly Bachruch extremely wealthy, and he owned numerous buildings in Budapest and two large country estates." In 1906, he was elevated to the nobility and

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