Ashtray (part of a set) - Part of the Saturnus tableware set

The Saturnus set was made for the Varia tableware design competition announced jointly by the Ministry of Culture, the Applied Arts Council and Fine Ceramics Industry Works in 1971, the results of which were announced in the summer of 1972. The jury’s first prize in the full dinnerware set category was won by Éva Ambrus’s Bella brand service, and the 50,000 forint special award was given to László Horváth’s Saturnus set.

The awarded items of the Varia competition were exhibited as part of the Művész az iparban (Artist in Industry) exhibition series launched by the Applied Arts Council in the Museum of Applied Arts between December 15, 1972 and January 15, 1973. In the meantime, László Horváth won another award with the Saturnus set at the 3rd National Ceramics Biennial in Pécs, where the service came in second. In 1972, a few items of the Saturnus set were also displayed at the exhibition titled Magyar design (10 kísérlet) (Hungarian Design [10 experiments]) held in Fészek Artists’ Club, organized by Sándor Borz Kováts, Mihály Pohárnok and György Soltész. The experimental exhibition showcasing ten works of eight designers started a meaning conversation in the paper titled Művészet (Art) about the questions of design.

The Saturnus’s achieved its biggest international success at the celebrated Concorso Internazionale della Ceramica d’Arte (31st International Competition for Ceramic Art) in Faenza, where László Horváth’s work came in third after Joe Colombo and Tapio Wirkkala in the category of household objects (i.e. design).

For more information about the story of the tableware set, see Object Fetish Part 6.