“I don’t know why we historians are so coy”
Applied arts historian Éva Csenkey on the Zsolnay heritage
MúzeumCafé 38.
Éva Csenkey worked for 13 years in Pécs, dealing with ceramics and contemporary sculpture. She got to know the Zsolnay descendants, but still didn’t feel inclined to be more deeply involved with Zsolnay products. At the Museum of Applied Arts an almost casually-allocated task and a commission from an Italian museum director brought a turnaround in her life. During the past 30 years several Hungarian and international exhibitions, specialist books, albums and processing the collection of László Gyugyi have made her arguably the most well-known researcher of Zsolnay products. She knows where the so-far unpublished family documents are lying hidden and how the Mausoleum’s ornamentation was taken away and dispersed. And what could have been more appropriate for her than to create the Zsolnay Quarter in Pécs with its exhibitions. In 1987 she decided to visit the mausoleum of Vilmos Zsolnay. Graves had been ransacked, the bones all mixed up and jewellery removed. The spectacle was appalling. The windows were broken, the eosin sarcophagus was covered with a thick layer of bird droppings and there were piles of dead birds. It was only the graves of Vilmos Zsolnay and his wife that had proved impossible to break into and rob. Even the lions beside the steps leading up had been stolen. Éva Hárs wrote a moving article about the conditions, and the museum’s photographer, Kata Nádor, took pictures of everything. These were displayed at the 2003 Zsolnay exhibition. Nationalisation took effect on Good Friday in 1948 and the Zsolnay factory, being among the largest, was one of the first to be taken over. The mausoleum, like the factory itself, was ransacked in 1950. This isn’t fully documented and as Éva Csenkey remarks: “I don’t know why we historians are so coy.”