Pál Horti

Born in Pest, the son of a respected tailor, Pál Horti enrolled in the Mintarajziskola art education college in 1881 and graduated as an art teacher in 1886. He studied painting in Munich, Paris and London, and in 1890 was appointed a lecturer in the Székesfővárosi Iparrajziskola (Budapest Industrial Art School), where he developed an interest in applied arts.

His first furniture appeared in 1897, when he presented armchairs at the Christmas Exhibition of the Applied Arts Association. In 1899, he won the Gold Medal of the Minister of Religious Affairs and Education. He exhibited at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair, where he won a gold medal for his carpet designs and for picture frames he designed jointly with János Balogh, and he received an honourable mention for his ceramics.

At the International Exhibition of Decorative Art at Turin in 1902, he was one of the curators of the Hungarian exhibitors, for which he was awarded a Diplôme d'Honneur.

For the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, he designed the installation of the applied arts group and the fine art exhibition, which won him the Grand Prix. He then stayed in the United States until 1906 as the foremost designer of an enterprise set up in Cincinnati called Shop of the Crafters. In spring 1906, he set off on an expedition to discover the roots of the Hungarian people in Mexico, Japan, China and Singapore. On his way home, having contracted yellow fever on his travels, he died in Bombay (Mumbai).

His furniture above all displays the effects of international currents of Art Nouveau: English Arts&Crafts, French-Belgian Art Nouveau, German Jugendstil and the Vienna Sezession all clearly had an influence on his work. His final works, produced in the United States, bear the marks of the American Arts&Crafts movement.