Prékopa Ágnes (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 31. (Budapest, 2017)
Zsuzsa MARGITTAL: La Fontaine’s Fables and Other Animal Tales in the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts’ Collection
back can be found in other collections. The fable ‘The lion and the Rat’ adorns the back of another armchair upholstered in Aubus- son tapestry, while ‘The Fox, the Wolf and the Horse’ (Le renard, le loup, et le cheval XII/17) decorates its seat. Housed in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art,15 the armchair is not the only one in the collection exemplifying this practice. At the same time, a lot of woven furniture upholstery can be found in secondary use. Thus it happens that a tapestry was not intended for the particular place it is found today on the furniture, or pieces that display a scene across their entire length may have originally had a solid-coloured border with decorative trim, as the set owned by Anthony’s Fine Art and Antiques does. Given that the story of the fox and the stork appears in a large portion of furniture tapestries decorated with fables in the Museum of Applied Arts, it must have indeed been a popular subject—as Maupassant’s quote suggests—on contemporary upholstery. It is important to note that not only woven tapestries but printed textiles also have a long tradition of depicting moralizing animal tales, as can be seen with toile de Jouy fabrics displaying La Fontaine fables. The 18th-century volumes of La Fontaine’s tales with engravings based on the drawings of Oudry and Antoine Coypel served as the primary sources for these fabrics. Some showed the most characteristic scenes from an entire series of fables.16 One of the manufactory’s designers, Jean-Baptiste Huet, inserted individual scenes from various fables in his textile patterns, which is not surprising as his initial success was earned depicting animal stories.17 In the 18th century, La Fontaine scenes were popular on printed handkerchiefs too.18 La Fontaine publications in the library of the Museum of Applied Arts The museum library’s collection also contains superb examples from the golden age of fable illustrations. In addition to La Fontaine volumes illustrated by Benjamin Rabier19 or Louis Maurice Boutet de Monvel,20 the library also has a version of Aesop’s fables illustrated by Walter Crane.21 It was the final volume in a successful three-part series that was the first collaboration between wood engraver Edmund Evans and illustrator Walter Crane. In 1877, the first volume, The Baby’s Opera, was published by Routledge and sold for 5 shillings a piece. Even the publisher was doubtful of the book’s potential for success and considered a print run of 10 000 copies of the small, square-format volume unjustified.22 Shortly thereafter, however, the second edition of the book achieved success, warranting the continuation of the series; thus The Baby’s Bouquet was published, followed in 1886 by The Baby’s Own Aesop. These small volumes are works of book art in every respect: the bookbinding, endpapers, and text, with its closely integrated illustrations and decorative frames, are all manifestations of a single concept—and even in their own time, the books enjoyed unrivalled popularity. Furthermore, this project provided Walter Crane with an opportunity to put into practice his principles of book art and illustration (on which he had already expounded in his theoretical work).23 The volumes discussed here—and several other similar publications—were among the early acquisitions of the Museum of Applied Arts’ library. Walter Crane’s volume of Aesop’s fables was obtained in the year prior24 to the large-scale comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s 46
