Körmöczi Katalin szerk.: Historical Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum 3 - From the End of the Turkish Wars to the Millennium - The history of Hungary in the 18th and 19th centuries (Budapest, 2001)

ROOM 15. Education, Science and Culture at the End of the 19th Century (Katalin Körmöczi - Eszter Aczél - Annamária T. Németh - Edit Haider)

65. "Vitam et sanguinem ", scene from the 1741 Diet of Pozsony (Bratislava), Copper relief József Szentpétery, Pest, 1852 By the early 19th century, the number of master-goldsmiths working at the same time in Pest was between thirty-five and forty. In their workshops dozens of apprentices and assistants were employed. Despite guild restrictions, the germs of manufacturing were appearing in goldsmith's art, too. In some workshops - the Gretschl, Giergl and Prandtner premises small machines were already in use, and not only assistants and apprentices were employed, but also outworkers and daylabourers. Trainee goldsmiths spent their study-time in Vienna and Prague, and master-goldsmiths imported pre-manufactured cast and pressed ornamental elements from there. The workshops of the best-off goldsmiths went in for serial production. Items of goldsmith's work lost their functions as stores of value. At the beginning of the 19th century, they were still finely formed and of good quality, and yet were becoming mass-produced items for use. The aristocracy ordered its tableware in Vienna and Paris, or purchased it from warehouses opened in Pest by Vienna masters. The Viennese Empire and Biedermeier styles influenced goldsmith's work in Hungary directly, and not just on the level of copies. In silversmith's work, Biedermeier, so characteristic of other genres in the middle of the century, was almost completely lacking. On a few objects, for ex-