Eosin – a spy story – Glass Collection, Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest
MúzeumCafé 9.
While the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris has only 20-25 Tiffany glass objects and the London’s Victoria and Albert Museum only a few, the collection in Budapest’s Museum of Applied Arts comprises more than sixty items. The story began in Valentin Leó Pantocsek’s laboratory in Zlatno. Pantocsek (1812–93) applied a special, thin glaze to glass surfaces, thus inventing around 1860 iridescent glass, showing all the colours of the rainbow. His first big collection resulted in sweeping success at the 2nd London World Exhibition in 1862. The iridescence involved pink flashing with gold and did not yet have the later eosin effect. However, the great glass manufacturer Lobmeyr fell in love with the fine show of light. Lobmeyr admitted that his brother-in-law enticed one of Pantocsek’s employees to Austria. From him they learnt the secrets of iridescent glass and also had him make the first items. Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933) came to Europe for the 1878 Paris World Exhibition. His attention was caught by the iridescent glass products of Thomas Webb & Sons, an English manufacturer. He contacted Webb’s leading glazier, Arthur J. Nash, and invited him to America, where he produced iridescent glass for Tiffany. The same fine play of light can be seen on Tiffany’s earliest glass objects in the New York Metropolitan Museum as characterise Pantocsek’s glasswork. The last chapter of this espionage story relates to Zsolnay who liked Tiffany’s iridescent glass and stole back Pantocsek’s invention. Zsolnay was helped by Vince Warta. Items he made are included in the Applied Arts Museum’s Glass Collection. It is only a legend that Zsolnay took the secret of eosin to the grave. The instructions concerning how to make it still exist – Vince Warta deposited them at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.