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

Ildikó PANDUR: Restoration of Metalwork from the Esterházy Treasury in the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts: Past, Present and Future

2. A first-floor hall of the permanent exhibition of the Esterházy treasury of the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts, 1920, Museum of Applied Arts, Archive

ship, together with other private collections, and transported them to the Museum of Applied Arts. When the Soviet Republic fell in August, after 133 days, the Romanian invasion prevented the artworks from being returned to their owners. During these months of turmoil, the museum took good care of the art treasures. They were placed in large safes installed in the apartments of the director, Gyula Végh, in a room in the museum building that was sealed off by bricking up the windows.10 Having safeguarded the treasures intact and without loss, the museum earned the respect of Prince Miklós Esterházy, who signed an agreement in 1920 placing the treasury on deposit there. There are records dating from 1920 of minor corrections and conservation work

carried out in the museum on certain items of the treasury.11

The permanent exhibition of the treasures opened in the first-floor halls of the Museum of Applied Arts on 20 April the same year. A special permit was required to visit it. (Fig. 2) Pál V Esterházy was the head of the fideicommissum at that time, and he renewed the deposit agreement in 1923.12 Like his father, he saw the museum as the best place for the family’s cherished treasures in the uncertain times following the First World War. The descriptions in the inventory attached to the deposit agreement are now primary sources for restorers trying to establish the condition of the items before the ravages of the next war.

The inventory attached to the deposit agreement does not cover the whole treas71