Magda Bácsi's donations to the Museum of Applied Arts

In recent years, the violinist Magda Bácsi has donated more than three hundred artefacts to the Museum, enriching its collections of metalware, textiles and – most of all – ceramics. We present a selection of the items she has so generously donated. The ceramics are outstanding in both quality and quantity, and include some 200 Far Eastern and 100 European items. The former represent ceramic arts going back five thousand years, most notably the Neolithic geometric-design vessels, special figurative burial pottery, animal-shaped personal objects, celadon-glaze vessels, exceptionally fine porcelain that once formed part of the collection of Augustine the Strong, elector and king of Poland (1670–1733), and precisely-datable treasures retrieved by divers from the cargoes of sunken ships. The most numerous of the European ceramics in Magdy Bácsi’s rich collection are splendid Zsolnay products, representing nearly every stage of the company’s history: from a salt-glazed jug dated to 1874 and Eosin-glazed Art Nouveau decorative wares that brought it world fame to modern-style small sculptures and personal objects designed in the 1960s. Of unmatched value is a two-place porcelain service of elegant design and decoration, in its original leather-bound case, from the greatest period of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory, when it was under the direction of Conrad von Sorgenthal (1784–1805).