Bányai József: A vadászat tárgyi eszközei - A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum tárgykatalógusai 2. (Budapest, 2010)

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National Fishing Authority - bustard, coot, bittern, wild goose —, altogether 113 items.

The planning of the floor and wall surfaces needed for the envisaged exhibitions for each department was undertaken by the cartographer Tódor Pokorny. The forestry and hunting department, its two constituents deemed ‘related and similar’, was allocated 634 sq m surface, of which hunting covered only 167 sq m.6

The rebuilding of the museum complex, this time with durable materials, was again entrusted to Ignác Alpár. The Renaissance Wing was completed in 1903 and by spring 1904 the construction of the Gothic Wing was also finished.7

The preparations for interior furnishings were overseen by ministerial aide Ferenc Saárossy-Kapeller, with the cooperation of several outstanding experts who also lent significant support to the organization of the various museum departments.

In 1905 Paikert wrote a letter to Darányi in which he advised the minister that experts were invited to help furnish the departments. The experts requested by the hunting department were Gyula Egerváry and József Ráth. In an other letter they asked the minister to divert some funds from the ministerial budget for the year 1904, which allowed 40,000 crowns for ‘the propagation

of public utility hunting and game marketing (Ordinary Expenses, chapter XX, title 4, section 2, subsection 7) so that the necessary items could be purchased for the hunting department. The letter stressed that huntingrelated objects were especially difficult to find and obtain.8

In 1907 Gyula Egerváry asked Duke Zuárd Odescalchi to lend his falconry-related objects to the hunting exhibition.9 Shortly before the opening of the museum Ferenc Saárossy-Kapeller wrote a letter to his old friend József Fónagy, the excellent hunter and specialist writer, and asked him to provide trophies, since - as he stated in the letter - he wished ‘the hunting exhibition to be outstanding in every respect.’ In his reply Fónagy offered 160 roe antlers, one good deer antler, prizes of Vizsla shows as well as books written by himself on the subjects of gun-dog training and pheasant breeding.10 11

The exhibitions of the museum were praised in several newspaper articles, even before the official opening. On 9 June 1907 Emperor-King Franz Joseph I declared the museum open. He viewed the exhibitions of the hunting department with special interest and expressed his ‘highest appreciation’.

In the spring of 1908 Count Béla Széchenyi donated the museum two sporting guns. These relics, extremely valuable from a historical point of view, had been purchased by his father, Count István Széchenyi, during his visit to Britain between 1820 and 1825, from the

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Shooting on Lake Balaton, c. 1920

famous gunsmiths John and Joseph Manton in London. The gun bought from Joseph Manton was used by the donor on a few occasions then he had it transformed to a Lancaster.

On 8 February 1909 Lujza Blaha, the widow of Baron Ödön Splényi, offered his late husband’s hunting legacy - hunting horn, signalling horn, dagger, beaker, altogether 14 items - for purchase. The legacy, valued at 200 crowns, was acquisitioned and catalogued by cartographer Tódor Pokorny, a museum employee."

On 1 April 1922 János Földi, retired ministerial counsellor, advised the museum in a letter that he was to offer the forestry, hunting and primeval agriculture departments some of his objects, listed in an inventory of 24 items. The list included a hunting horn, call whistles for roe and hazel grouse, a hunting bag, a flask and catalogues from the year 1910.12

In the autumn of 1927 the Archduke Joseph donated the museum a 9.3 mm Mauser sporting gun. The valuable item was exhibited in the Gothic Wing of the museum, in a showcase situated next to the wall of the Csütörtökhely Chapel, accompanied by a bag list signed by the Archduke.13

In the first half of the 1950s, alongside the preparations for the new exhibitions, collecting work started again, which at that time was closely connected to exhibition projects. Collectors aimed not at objects, but animals needed for dermoplastics or various supplementary material (for models, dioramas etc.).

The museum acquired in 1955 a deer calling horn, next year a snow-shoe, in 1960 a beautifully made hunting horn in a silver setting by the poet Miklós Szemere (1802- 1881), and in 1961 a total of 14, generally quite valuable, hunting tools from the collection of György Fodor in Budapest.

In 1965 János Nagyházy, a collector in Debrecen, sold the museum a gunpowder cabinet for 350 Forints.

6 ibid., IX. 916/248.

7 S. Szabó, Ferenc, A hatvanéves Mezőgazdasági Múzeum, 1896-1956, Budapest, 1956, p. 58.

8 Archives of the Museum of Hungarian Agriculture, IX. 921/119.

9 ibid., IX. R.M.A. (1907)

10 ibid., IX. R.M.A. (1907)

11 ibid., IX. 971/148.

12 ibid., IX 107/1922.

13 ibid., IX. 674/1927.

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