Ferkai András: Shopfronts - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1996)

complete shopfronts, that is they made not only the metal structure (iron, brass, bronze, nickel-bronze or stainless white metal) or the wooden structure covered with metal plates, but also all the stonework, the cast-stone facing, the marble, coloured glass and tile covering, and they created the advertising features and arranged the window displays. Modern shopfronts could only emerge from such a professional industrial background.

Considering the great number of modern frontages built at the same time, very few have survived. The most prominent have been destroyed (not one individual shopfront by Lajos Kozma has survived) and those still in existence hardly reveal any of their former beauty since they have been altered and deprived of their original materials and advertising features. Early modern shopfronts are represented by some of the industrial designer-cum-builder Ferenc Ken- de’s constructions undertaken for Frigyes Stühmer’s firm.

Stühmer settled in Pest in 1866. Two years later he set up a workshop'in a one-storey building at 8 Szentkirályi utca. Gradually, the small sugar-making enterprise developed into a big factory. In 1883 Stühmer was the first to introduce a new technology for manufacturing chocolate in Hungary by using a steam process. He made cocoa, chocolate and various kinds of sweets. Among his well- known products were chocolate made with cream, the still available chocolate bar “Tibi’', and the “Mal-Ko" and “Bron- hy” throat lozenges. It was something new that the firm itself sold what it produced. It opened branches in the capital and in larger provincial towns. Later it also supplied

The facade of the Stühmer headquarters AT 8 SZENTKIRÁLYI UTCA, Vili

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