Vase

The straight foot supports a ball-shaped body with a horizontal shoulder, ending in a cylindrical neck and a splaying, plain top rim. The surface decoration of the slightly iridescent, red body is applied with three loosely arranged, naturalistic narcissus stems with leaves, shaped of thin clay sheets. One of the leaves, protruding and twisted, connected to the top rim, serves as the handle. The leaves and the stems are bright golden-green, the flower is dull, silvery-yellow. This object is likely to have been produced with the personal guidance of József Rippl-Rónai in Pécs, between November 1897 and August 1898, for the decoration of Count Tivadar Andrássy's dining room. Apart from stylistic evidence (the motifs, the spontaneous, simple interpretation, the coupling of red and green) this supposition is supported by the fact that there are two similar cups in the Janus Pannonius Museum in Pécs (see Inv.Nos. 51.4743.1, 51.4854.1), which are marked only by the Zsolnay factory. These were on the sideboard shelf of the Andrássy dining room, as seen in the archive photo taken at the 1898 Christmas exhibition in the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts (see the photo illustration published in the periodical Magyar Iparművészet (Hungarian Applied Art). The factory Facon Book 7. contains no remark as to the designer of drawing No. 5135, just like in the case of other drawings attributed to Rippl-Rónai and produced between November 1897 and August 1898. Rippl's name appears only in the Décor Book as a later remark from 1910, when pieces were being produced again.