Veres László: Üvegművességünk a XVI-XIX. században (Miskolc, 2006)

HUNGARIAN GLASSWARE PRODUCTION IN THE 16TH—19TH CENTURIES

HUNGARIAN GLASSWARE PRODUCTION IN THE 16™—19™ CENTURIES t L oreign experts know hardly anything about the history of Hungarian glass-making. Writers JL of foreign studies of glassmaking from all over the world seem to ignore the history of our glassmaking, just as the authors (eg. Schmidt, Kademacher, \ r

ávrd) of the great old monographs did. The fact that the history of the Hungarian glass industry is unknown abroad is particularly unfortunate because the picture of the European history of glassmaking is consequently lacking certain Hungarian data which could have modified views concerning the general development of glass art. The fact that the Hungarian glass industry is virtually unknown abroad is a result of the general level of research into the history of glassmaking. The reason for this obscurity can be directly attributed to the unique character of muscology as well as to the rate of processing the available information and the subsequent rate of its publication. In addition to glass of eastern and Roman origin, the first glassware products in Hungarian museums were Venetian, Czech and German items that belonged to the treasuries of the old monarchs, princes and well-to-do noble families. The exhibitions of the Hungarian millennial celebrations and the significant innovations of glassmaking technologies at the end of the 19

lh century first drew attention to glass products manufactured in the Carpathian Basin. The first edition of the catalogue of the Hungarian National Museum, Cimeliotheka, published in 1825, only included a few glass products in its chapter on Hungarian antiques. One of them was a large bottle decorated with the coat of arms of the Bakv family with the date 1695 on it. Another was the long-stemmed glass made of cut glass from 1708, which belonged to Ferenc Rákóczi II's chief arms commissioner, Pál Lányi and his wife. By the turn of the century the National Museum had acquired a significant stock as a result of intentional collecting that started in the 1870s. In addition to old Hungarian glass, outstanding examples of contemporary glass art also found their way into the collection. One of these items was the exquisite glass baptismal font made by the well known glass artist, István Sovánka, which bears the following inscription: "The offering of Miklós Göpfert glass factory owner from Xay-Ugróc for the Hungarian National Museum on the occasion of the [Magyar] Millenial Exhibition, made by István Sovánka." The core collection of the Museum of Applied Arts, established in 1879, came from the National Aluseum. Over one hundred old glass items, among them the baptismal font, were donated to the public collection, which had the future