1900 Paris World’s Fair

At the dawn of the new century, The French nation invited the nations of the world to show the best of their work, their knowledge, and their art. The interested public streamed through the porte monumentale at the entrance. The Petit Palais accommodated a retrospective exhibition of French fine art, and the Grand Palais showed modern art of France and foreign countries. Another fine point of the exhibition was the enormous horseshoe-shaped Champs de Mars, with the Salle des Fêtes and Chateau d'eaux at its centre and with branches running up to the Eiffel Tower. The third part of the exhibition was the Rue des Nations, a row of grand buildings on the bank of the Seine joined by a continuous terrace, with national restaurants in the cellars. Every nation was clearly striving to make an impact with the originality and unique aspects of its national architecture. The Hungarian pavilions at the Paris World’s Fair were designed by Zoltán Bálint and Lajos Jámbor (Frommer), commissioned by the Hungarian royal commissioner, who specified a uniform character for the 14–16 Hungarian groups. The two architects attached a statement to their plans: “The Parisian exhibition organisation has specified that the nations will not exhibit in their own pavilions, but will be presented side by side in enormous halls for specific industries, thus in the most heated competition. The only exception to this system is the Avenue des Puissances Étrangères, where certain powers, to protect their individuality, as it were, are building their own pavilions. The historical style is mandatory for these pavilions, and it is therefore self-evident that we designed this pavilion with a series of motifs selected from the best of Hungary’s historic buildings, and in the great hall we naturally strove to distinguish ourselves from the other nations and enter into competition with them through our industry and its mode of presentation. We had to incorporate modernity into our designs, but also show that we have an individual character, and that Hungarians are the nation that by virtue of its racial strength, puts its stamp upon everything that is created here. It is not an easy task, and we naturally feel some anxiety as we open up the result to the criticism of the world. We do not expect much, but we will be fully satisfied if we succeed in distinguishing the Hungarian sections from those of the neighbouring countries, and convey the unity of industry groups spaced several kilometres apart by injecting a Hungarian flavour into the parts of the world’s great fair that proclaim the existence and flourishing of the Hungarian people.”

The French reserved for themselves the great hall on the left side of the Esplanade, together with its subsidiary buildings, and even the north end of the building on the right side, where the French pottery and glass industries were placed. The remainder was divided among the various nations, who thus each had much less space than the French. Each nation could fill the area assigned to them in their own way without regard to the others. The Hungarian applied arts section was placed between the Austrian and the Danish groups. The designers (Bálint and Jámbor) drew their motifs mainly from Hungarian pottery. The group’s curators also made deft use of a sign hanging from the roof in the centre of the hall with “HONGRIE” written in large letters and the Hungarian coat of arms on each side, making the presence of the Hungarian applied arts group visible from far away. Interior design took up the greater part of the area of the applied arts hall. Six interiors opened from the central court. In one, a table was set with all of the appurtenances and decorations made for the Royal Palace of Buda, and beside it was Ödön Faragó and Róbert Nádler’s furniture for the Budapest mayor’s room. On the other side of the courtyard was the ministerial room for the new Parliament building, then St Stephen’s Hall, and finally, the garden room for the Royal Palace commissioned from Ödön Faragó. There were separate compartments for work by M. Gelb and Son, H. Kramer, József Bernstein and Son, K. H. Bernstein and Son, Frigyes Spiegel, Viktor Bányai, Imre Mahunka and Gábor Steinbach. The rest of the furniture was arranged in the corridors and along the wall: cabinets by Pál Borkai, Ferenc Czimbalmos, András Horvát, Tamás Kántor, Alajos Polgár, Reisz and Perfesz, Béla Walnicsek and György Zimonyi, and desks by Lajos Biró, Ferenc Keszli and József Varga. These items, apart from three or four designed by Hirschler, Polgár and Toroczkai Wigand, were all made to plans by Ödön Faragó, who with his acknowledged inventiveness endowed furniture of similar size and identical function with considerable variety. An exquisitely-manufactured three-leaf walnut door adorned with artistic carvings by the great industrialist Endre Thék, who also made the minister’s room in Parliament, evoked the undivided admiration of foreign experts. One interior of the Hungarian applied arts section was taken up by Croatian applied art, half being work by various exhibitors and the other half items made in the Zagreb School of Applied Arts. In the Hungarian ceramics group, Zsolnay ware stood out, but Professor Pál Horti made his debut as a potter, with pieces that made use of noble, lead-free glazes. The Herend company exhibited its porcelain and Ede Telcs, his terracotta statuettes. Hungarian fine metalware and jewellery was represented by A. Bachruch, Ede Telcs, the Szandrik company, Samu Hibján, Gyula Háry, Pál Horti, Mór Hirschler, Árpád Székely and Béla Krieger. The bronze and other small sculpture of the Hungarian group were: Károly Senyei’s Kuruc and  György Vastagh Jr’s Csikós, bronze vases of original form modelled by Pál Horti, and Ö. Fülöp Beck’s modern bronze vessels. Textile art was represented by the Hungarian-motif carpets of Sarolta Kovalszky Wittmann and the Torontál Carpet Works, Pál Horti, Sándor Nagy and János Vaszary, Gyula Háry, Ödön Faragó, Róbert Nádler, and Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch. Stained glass by Gida Waltherr was on display in the Hungarian pavilion, and glass mosaics by Miksa Róth on the Esplanade.

Pap H. 'A Párisi kiállítás épületei' in: Magyar Iparművészet 1900/4. szám, 176-183.

s. au. 'A Párisi kiállítás magyar csoportjai egy részének installácionális tervei' in: Magyar Iparművészet 1900/1-2. szám, 53-56.

Györgyi K. 'Az iparművészet a Párisi kiállításon' in: Magyar Iparművészet 1900/5. szám, 209-304.

by Jessica Fehérvári