Motherhood III: Exploration
Pictorial and Mental Representations of Motherhood, Childhood and the Mother–Child Relationship
It is by experiencing the complete security provided by the mother and their immediate environment that a baby or toddler becomes capable of turning to the outside world, exploring it physically and mentally, while temporarily moving away from the mother. Turning towards the outside world, curiosity about the environment, is what makes development and learning possible.
Children's shoes - Siesta modelMuseum of Applied Arts, Budapest
In the third selection of our series on motherhood and the mother–child relationship, we present objects and images from the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts that are related to the exploratory activities of infants and young children.
In the context of this virtual exhibition, ‘mother’ is to be understood broadly, referring to any carer who is important to the child, regardless of their gender or biological relationship.
In this ceramic composition, the mother and her child are closely and securely linked through eye and physical contact, while the child is at some distance from the mother. Is he moving away? Or is he returning to his mother? We do not know, but the mother holds and supports him by linking her gaze and hands with his.
Mother Playing with Her Child (ca. 1906) by Ingeborg Plockross IrmingerMuseum of Applied Arts, Budapest
In the early 20th century, the Danish porcelain factory Bing and Grøndahl, which operated between 1853 and 1987, produced a series of delicately rendered porcelain figurines of mothers interlocking eyes with one or two children.
Fields of Exploration: Clothing
One of the first things a baby discovers about itself and its environment is its own hands and feet. We have selected children’s shoes from the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts, which, although made for slightly older children, offered a lot for their wearers to discover—including colours, patterns, textures and shapes—and now bring to mind the first steps of a child moving away from his mother.
Childrenswear from Turkestan
This Turkmen child’s tunic from the late 19th century, now in the Textile Collection of the Museum of Applied Arts, features sumptuous embellishment that covers almost its entire surface:
the symmetrical arrangement of shells, beads, metal plates and coins served, first and foremost, to ward off evil influences and disease. In addition to this function, it also provided an opportunity for the child to explore different materials found in nature or man-made, as well as material qualities, textures, colours, and a chance to learn about their meaning and purpose in the community.
Fields of Exploration: Furniture for Children, Toys
The child, childhood and its specificities, peculiarities and needs became the focus of attention worldwide in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. The adultomorphic view of the child was increasingly disproved by observations that became more and more systematic. Theories flourished about the child’s mind, imagination, activity and development, as did reform pedagogies and novel concepts of favourable material environments for children.
The importance of the child’s own space, the nursery, the toys, and the opportunities for collecting experience were emphasized.
‘From the first attempts to touch things to the first life lessons, the path leads through the nursery. … We take with us lifelong memories from the nursery, with every part, every nook and cranny clinging to the opening mind and leaving in it the flowers or thorns of a child's experience,’ wrote the art writer Pál Nádai in his Könyv a gyermekről (1911, 1–2).
This original photo shows Vilmos Wessely’s design for a children’s room, exhibited at the 1907 exhibition of the Society of Applied Arts. (The children’s room Wessely had exhibited at the Milan World Fair a year earlier was destroyed in a fire, but a photograph of it has survived.) The furniture and toys were made in the State School of Toy Making in Hegybánya-Szélakna near Selmecbánya (Banská Štiavnica). A photograph of the nursery was published in the New York magazine The Craftsman in 1908.
In the Hungary of the early 20th century, the efforts to create toys and furniture that met the needs of children went hand in hand with the desire to develop a national, Hungarian character/style, to feature it on the toys and furnishings, and to boost toy manufacturing in the country.
Children's room furniture, Spring Exhibition of The Association of Applied Arts 1907, archival photo (1907) by unknownMuseum of Applied Arts, Budapest
These goals informed the 1904 toy competition of the Society of Applied Arts. Vilmos Wessely’s pieces, which were inspired by the structural solutions and formal vocabulary of Hungarian folk toys, were among the successful entries.
The committee then purchased, among other things, his ‘rotating, rattling tumbler,’ probably identical with the toy visible by the foot of the table.
This construction toy was originally designed in 1923 by Alma Siedhoff-Buscher at the Bauhaus, for the children’s room of a model house in Weimar, and reproduced by Kurt Naef in 1988. Toys—reflecting the pedagogical and aesthetic principles of the art school—were also produced at the Bauhaus. What were very often construction toys, made usually of wood, were meant to develop inventive skills and to provide a wide range of variations, featuring bright primary colours and basic geometric shapes.
Cosmetic packaging design: Fabulon baby cosmetics
Designed in 1972 and awarded the Industrial Design Council’s Award of Design Excellence in 1980, this range of packaging for baby cosmetics features distinctive primary colours, along with basic geometric shapes and dimensions that are practical and safe.
The containers give young children the opportunity to manipulate and explore colours, shapes and materials.
Originally the designer envisaged a range in which the containers were modules that could be fit together, so that children could learn about quantities and counting, but the manufacturer found it was not technically feasible.
Children’s chairs from the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts, from different periods and places, offering the possibility to experience stability and instability, colours, shapes and textures.
The illustration on one of the first pages of Baby's Bouquet (1878), compiled and illustrated by Walter Crane, shows a contemporary baby carrier (pram). These, like today’s modern pushchairs, allowed children to see their surroundings, observe the world closely, manipulate things and interact with the people around them.
Fields of Exploration: Mental Space, Stories
Although the first kindergarten was opened in Hungary in 1828, an institution with a similar approach to today’s, emphasizing play, storytelling, singing, and conversation, rather than education in the manner of a school, appeared only after the childcare act of 1891, in the last years of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century. After the law came into force, the education of young children was informed by a nationalist spirit, with an emphasis on the folk culture and the use of materials native to Hungary.
Storytelling room for a daycare home, archival photo (1914) by unknownMuseum of Applied Arts, Budapest
Storytelling room for daycare home
Lajos Kozma presented the furnishings of a storytelling room in a nursery school at the 1914 Exhibition of Children’s Art.
Although the shapes and colours of the chairs and tables for the children and the storytelling chair for the kindergarten teacher are reminiscent of 18th-century English furniture and French Baroque and Rococo, the painted motifs (gingerbread hearts, birds, flowers and braids) are distinctively Hungarian.
Storytelling room for a daycare home, archival photo (1914) by unknownMuseum of Applied Arts, Budapest
There is a row of flower pots on the windowsill behind the storyteller’s chair. The presence of plants provides an opportunity to observe ‘nature’ in detail and to participate in their care—activities that were prominent parts of the reform pedagogy of the time.
Colourful and rich in detail, Kató Lukáts’s illustrations for children’s stories provided great opportunities to observe and comment on a myriad of tiny details, to share emotions and thoughts, and to learn. The designer, who began her career in the 1920s, in the 1950s, when the publication of children’s literature was a state monopoly in Hungary, with the most renowned artists employed for high quality publications, she created illustrations for a number of popular storybooks and film strips.
Fields of Exploration: Nutrition/Eating, Physical Care
For infants and young children, eating also means a range of things to explore: the interactions and stimuli that accompany breastfeeding, the consistency, taste, colour, and texture of food other than mother’s milk, the shape, colour and pattern of the food container all contribute to the experience of eating.
In the 1980s, glass artist Ágnes Kertészfi designed household glassware for the Nagykanizsa Glass Factory. Her baby feeding set, which included a bottle, was put into production and won the main prize of the 1985 Silicate Industry Triennial.
One of the most recent developments in the millennia-long history of methods, materials and devices to substitute for breast milk and breastfeeding is the creation of formulas and baby bottles. Both required a number of technological experiments and developments, such as the production of heat-resistant, sterilizable materials for the bottle and the teat, and the creation of shapes that make practical and safe use possible.
Cutlery set for children (1906) by unknownMuseum of Applied Arts, Budapest
Cutlery set for children
This richly decorated, historicizing silver cutlery set for children was probably made in Austria around 1900, and includes a spoon, a rounded knife and a four-pronged fork, as well as a goblet, a cup, a saucer, a napkin ring and a rattle with a bone handle.
Noble, special and hygienic, silver was often used for objects and gifts for babies and small children. To be born with a ‘silver spoon in one’s mouth’ meant future wealth; silver objects (often combined with coral) helped with teething; and silver rattles, as the noisemaking instruments commonly found around babies and often given as gifts at the birth of a newborn, were believed to ward off evil forces.
Infants usually find nasal suction frightening—mainly because of the noise involved. The Nosiboo, designed by two Hungarian engineers (also fathers), won both the Red Dot Award and the German Design Award, and has a shape that children like: it resembles a teddy bear. Schematically modelled on purpose, the teddy can be held by the child, with its ears offering a secure grip; however, the nozzle is at the end of a 1.5-metre-long tube, so the device can be placed at a distance from the child.
Returning to the Parent
Design for Erzsi Gazdag's fairy tale titled Mesebolt (Story Store)
We close our selection with another image by Kató Lukáts. The illustration for the poem, Lépegetődal (Stepping Song), from the volume titled Mesebolt (Story Store) closes the circle started at the beginning of this virtual exhibition: the small child moved away from her mother to examine the world, and after her physical and mental exploration, returns to the mother, the safe haven.
by Judit Király, PhD (text) and Sarolta Sztankovics (editing)
We would like to thank our museologist colleagues for their help and assistance with the selection of objects and for the valuable information they provided:
Melinda Farkasdy
Krisztina Friedrich
Erzsébet Heltai
Éva Horányi
Hilda Horváth, PhD
Zsófia Hutvágner
Ildikó Kálosi
Rita Komporday
Zsuzsanna Lovay, PhD
Zsuzsa Margittai
Eszter Marosi
Györgyi Nagy
Piroska Novák
Ágnes Prékopa, PhD
Diána Radványi
Balázs Semsey
Réka Semsey
Szilveszter Terdik, PhD
Katalin Varga
and special thanks to:
Amber Winick
