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

Diána RADVÁNYI: Changes in the Critical Reception of Haban Ceramics: A Brief History of Research with a Discussion of Some Prominent Viewpoints

and if so how is it manifested? (...) We have a tin-glazed vessel6 with the earliest date— 1606—and its companion, plate no. 1537 (Fig. 2) depicted here, whose form is that of a metal dish; its decoration, on the other hand, may have been copied by the master from written documents, signalling that at the time, the system of decorating tin- glazed white dishes had not yet developed, as it was later, at the end of the 17th century and in the 18th century, when a uniform approach and spirit emerged. We have thirty- four monochrome, dark blue dishes from these two centuries. Decoration on the earlier ones is white and on the later ones white and yellow. It would be interesting to trace in which region of the country these were produced and what inspired the use of this distinctive glaze, as similar pottery can be found only in southern France. Is this a coincidence?

Old inventories mention an earthenware dish now called Habaner, with the label ‘made by a new Christian’, which has beautiful, unblemished white glaze and unique decoration strongly reminiscent of Netherlandish faience; jugs with insignias and inscriptions, which were given to guilds and often had surprisingly large capacities, are represented by some superb examples.”8

These publications with descriptions of ‘Hungarian’ ceramics are interesting because much earlier, Antal Áldásy had examined Haban ceramics using Anabaptist sources and published his findings in 18929 and 1893,10 and for the first time provided correct and expanded descriptions of the history of Anabaptist communities in Hungary. Several years later, in 1889, an article by János Szendrei, also based on an Anabaptist codex, was published on the Habans and their ceramics.11 The next year

Szendrei investigated similarities between embroidery patterns and the motifs on Haban dishware.12 Also in 1889, the well- known Pozsony collector Mór Spitzer published a history of the Habans of Upper Hungary after—as Spitzer recounts—hearing János Szendrei’s yearly address and borrowing his information.13

Publications by Kornél Divald and Károly Layer14 during the period that lasted largely until the 1930s show that the determinations made by researchers about the history of the Haban’s religious and community life, their ceramics, and their migration, as well as major conclusions drawn at the time, are still valid today.

Meanwhile, Haban objects found in the Slovak regions were viewed as a part of Slovak ‘national’ ceramics. This determination launched what the married couple Mária Krisztinkovich and Jenő Horváth dubbed the ‘hundred years’ Haban war’. They stated that the first shot was ‘fired’ by Pavel Sochan in his 1896 study that dealt with the development of Slovak ceramics. Although they referred to it as a rather amateur work, they noted it had been written more than a century ago, and given the era, it displayed surprising erudition in its identification of the ceramics as Hutterite-Haban. They also noted that the publication contained illustrations of forty-four works of Haban ceramics.15 Hungarian readers were also familiar with Pavel Sochan’s article. József Ernyei provided an account of it, noting that Sochan believed that Czech majolica manufacturers and not the Habans had created the ceramics based on the motifs (in particular the lion with two tails) and the inscriptions in Czech. ‘The Czech exiles are primarily responsible for the famous majolica of Hungary’s Tótság (a national minority in a region today mostly in Slova27