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

7. Joachim Szvetnik with the Vezekény Basin, Museum of Applied Arts, Archive

addition does not disturb the experience engendered by the object.’29 The minutes of a restoration meeting called to discuss the 105 X 88 cm Vezekény Basin in spring I96030 is highly revealing. Joachim Szvetnik presented his proposals for approval. The museum director, Aladár Dobrovits, decided on maximum restoration. ‘Restoration must render the object appreciable for the exhibition and the lay public. (...) When it is hammered out, many details of the ornament, as may be seen, will disappear (...). To an expert, even a fragment has something to say, but the public needs an artwork with aesthetic effect.’ (Fig. 7)

This text prompts the question of whether this is restoration or reconstruction. Did traces of original tooling remain on the artwork after intervention on this scale, and if so, how do we know which they were? Can the piece be used as a physical source for the work of goldsmiths in seventeenth-century Augsburg? The answer may be yes as regards the composition and the iconography, but much information on the original craftsman’s technique has been irretrievably lost. We can look in wonder at what is undoubtedly a wonderful accomplishment by the restorers, but we must ask who deserves greater respect—

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