Zsolnay
Art Nouveau belonged to the major cities of Europe — Paris, Glasgow, and Berlin — with one major exception. The small Hungarian town of Pecs (PAY-shh) produced some of the period’s most significant, colorful and creative pottery.
Hungarian native Jozsef Rippl-Ronai brought the sensuous whiplash lines of the Secessionist Movement, as Art Nouveau was called in Eastern Europe, across the Austrian Alps from Paris. Also contributing to the Secessionist’s foothold in Hungary was a building boom in Budapest, the capital. The Zsolnay Manufactory had developed a durable frost-resistant exterior tile, pyrogranite, which was the surface of choice for roofs, balustrades and facings.
The glaze used to cover pyrogranite and Zsolnay’s art pottery was eosin, a color-shifting luster glaze developed originally by the Chinese and Italians. It was rediscovered in Pecs as early as 1870. Eosin came in a rainbow of colors including red, brown, silver, gray, blue and an iridescent green-gold. Zsolnay’s most dramatic and expensive Art Nouveau forms have at least three eosin colors.
The most common eosin glaze on Zsolnay’s exported wares was a shimmering monochrome green-gold. In early examples, the gold side dominated; newer forms are greener.
Zsolnay shapes seem never ending. Between 1898 and 1914, the manufactory created 3,590 separate designs. Counting pieces produced in different sizes and colors, the true total is closer to 5,000.
Preceding their work in Art Nouveau, Zsolnay produced three eclectic Victorian lines (1868 to 1897). The first was simple, provincial yellow ware, a line largely ignored by collectors. Hungarian folkloric ware production was begun in the mid-1870′s and continues to the present day. Many pieces were pierced, flamboyant, high-quality forms in polychrome glazes that attracted broad collector interest. Zolnay’s third early line was Renaissance Revival ware, a collection of mugs, plates and trays decorated with forest animals, portraits, and medieval village or wedding scenes, all produced for export to the West.
Although there are a variety of Zsolnay marks, an easy way to approximate the production date of later pieces is to keep in mind the year ‘”1868″. From 1968 to 1996, Zsolnay incorporated that erroneous founding date into its mark. After 1996, the correct date of 1853 was used. Although some early pieces were hand-dated, Zsolnay marks before 1968 omitted the date entirely.
From 1897 to 1920, the new spirit of Art Nouveau dominated life at Pecs. It was Zsolnay’s golden age with the year 1900 standing at the apex of elegance and creativity.
Reference note by p4A.com Contributing Editor Pete Prunkl.