In Circulation: Maria Jeglińska
Reflections of Contemporary Designers on the Collection of the Museum of Applied Arts
Portable Wall-B installation view of the exhibitionMuseum of Applied Arts, Budapest
We launched the series of seasonal exhibitions entitled In Circulation in the Hungarian Museum of Applied Arts’ György Ráth Villa in 2018, with the primary aim of keeping our collections in motion and further developing them.
According to our concept, the invited designer will select an object or ensemble of objects from the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts, and will create a new design as inspired by the object(s). The ambition of the exhibition is for the museum to spark a design process which would not have been possible without the object(s) selected from the museum’s collections.
The design object(s) born from the inspiration of the museum’s collection will also become a part of the collection, which in future will also provide the opportunity for further relations and exhibitions.
The second designer we invited for the series was Maria Jeglińska from Poland. She was born in Fontainebleau (France) in 1983. In 2010 she established her Office for Design & Research in London. She graduated from ECAL’s (Lausanne, CH) industrial design course in 2007 and was awarded a scholarship from the IKEA Foundation, that led her to work for Galerie kreo in Paris, Konstantin Grcic in Munich and Alexander Taylor in London. She works on a wide range of commissions: industrial design projects, exhibition design, as well as research-based projects.
Maria Jeglińska selected an armchair designed by Sándor Mikó from the museum’s collection, which counts more than 100,000 pieces. This chair served as one piece of the furnishings of the Te + Én eszpresszó [You + Me espresso bar] that operated on Bem rakpart [embankment] in Budapest.
While the cylindrical arm and neck supports, as well as the surface of the seat are currently upholstered in cappuccino brown velvet, the original colour of the espresso bar’s interior was indigo blue.
Alongside the armchairs of the Te + Én espresso bar, it was the co-called separés (booths), or partitions, that dominated the interior, creating islands of intimacy within the open space.
These spatial dividers also became popular elements of the interiors of Hungarian espresso bars and cafés in the 1960s and the 1970s, creating the possibility for personal, intimate space within public space, so that the guests could feel that they were in community space and personal space at the same time.
Armchair
Interior designer Sándor Mikó (1927 - 2014) taught at the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts between 1975–1988. From 1989, he was an independent designer, and also one of the designers employed by Hajdúthonet in Debrecen and Balaton Bútorgyár [Furniture Factory] in Veszprém.
Mikó’s oeuvre was characterised by bold pairings ofmaterial, form and style. He was not at all afraid of amalgamating realms completely distant from each other within his works. The feeling or mood that the objects or spaces he designed elicited from their users was importan to him.
The armchair selected by Jeglińska, assembled from four square panels of walnut, and standing on four walnut cubes, simultaneously carries the charm of homemade tinkered furniture, as well as the geometric signs stemming from coherent, well-planned design. Existence within space, the temporal shifting of spaces, and the articulation of space provide central themes in the work of Maria Jeglińska, just as design to aid mobilisable or movable spatial organisation. She felt precisely the duplicity in the formal language of this chair: the stable support, alongside its function of separation.
Maria Jeglińska was born as the child of parents who immigrated in the 1970s. Following the political change of regime, the family returned to Poland with their four children. Maria, who was 7 and a half at the time, remembers the experience of returning to Poland in this way: "It was just like being transported from a colour film into a black-and-white one”.
The East-West dichotomy and its delimiting border play a key role in Jeglińska’s life. The role of freedom and also of colour carry a dual experience, and this is apparent in these works of her. Inspired by the armchair she selected, Jeglińska designed playful spatial partitions - or Portable Walls. Studies on walls that support us when travelling in space, as the designer call them - which are also colourful characters.
Portable Wall-CMuseum of Applied Arts, Budapest
Space divider - 'Portable Wall-C
The stylised dividers reminiscent of human or animal figures are
coquettish pieces.
Portable Wall-A Portable Wall-A (2019) by Maria JeglińskaMuseum of Applied Arts, Budapest
Space divider - 'Portable Wall-A'
They are located somewhere along the frontier of opening and closing, at the border of 2D and 3D.
Portable Wall-BMuseum of Applied Arts, Budapest
Space divider - 'Portable Wall-B'
It is up to us to decide whether they connect us or separate us, and whether we see them on a plane or in space.
Portable Wall-TMuseum of Applied Arts, Budapest
Space divider - 'Portable Wall-T'
While different items may be placed upon my Portable Walls, they are also objects in themselves. You can use them to partition space, or remove their assigned functionality (the piece of furni-ture and its content) and situate them in another space. Motion is part of their form.
One thing, however, is certain: they are in motion.
Freely.
by Judit Horváth, PhD; Melinda Farkasdy; Rita Komporday
Sarolta Sztankovics (ed.)
