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

“Szent István Bonbon" at 31 Andrássy út, VI

The frontage of the small shop was separated from the rest of the magnificent block’s fagade in Andrássy út with a narrow frame made of white marble. Its solid surfaces were covered with smoked glass and the metal structures with chromium plates. The company’s emblem and a sign saying “bonbon" nicely engraved on stainless steel were attached to a frosted-glass panel, which could be illuminated from the inside, in the upper part of the portal. The main features of the shopfront have remained, but its materials have been changed. The marble slabs of the frame have degenerated into asbestos slates and a multi-coloured small mosaic has supplanted the smoked glass. When it was planned to open a Meinl shop there at the end of the 1980s, the metal parts were painted brown and the chromium plates were hidden under an aluminium strip! Since the shop was appropriated by Bonbon Hemingway, all that has happened is that the new company’s gaudy plastic advertising board has been put in the place of the former frosted-glass panel. It is also a kind of image, but how different it is from those created before the war! It seems that in Andrássy út “dressing” properly was the right thing to

27