Before Leaving the House
Before leaving the house, someone touched the water.
These two small porcelain objects were made to hang on a wall, probably close to a doorway or in a bedroom. The little basin at the bottom held holy water. A finger dipped into it, the sign of the cross, and then the person went about their day.
They are domestic holy-water fonts, or acquasantiere. They brought a ritual more usually associated with the entrance to a church into the home.
Neither carries a maker's name. On their backs are only the impressed numbers 158 and 164, most likely factory model or mould numbers. Their moulded porcelain bodies, pastel decoration and touches of gilding are characteristic of inexpensive devotional ceramics produced in Central Europe around the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
One depicts St Anthony of Padua with the Christ Child, one of the most familiar images in Catholic popular devotion. The identity of the figure on the second font is less certain, and without a maker's mark or documentation it would be wrong to invent an attribution.
The absence of a prestigious manufacturer's name is, in a way, part of their appeal.
These were not objects intended for collectors.
They were made to be used.
A Catholic town on the border
The two fonts were found together in Szentgotthárd, western Hungary, only a few kilometres from today's Austrian and Slovenian borders.
That location does not tell us where they were manufactured. Objects travelled then just as they do now, particularly in a region where Hungarian, German-speaking and Slovene communities lived alongside one another. Szentgotthárd still describes itself as a town with Hungarian, Slovenian and German-speaking populations.
But it does give them an appropriate historical setting.
Religion has been woven into the history of Szentgotthárd almost from the town's beginning. King Béla III established a Cistercian monastery there in 1183, and the settlement developed around it.
The great Baroque Church of the Assumption that dominates the town today was begun in 1748 and finally consecrated in 1779. Its high altar depicts the Assumption of the Virgin, following Cistercian tradition.
So finding two small Catholic devotional objects here is hardly surprising.
What we cannot know is more interesting.
We don't know whose wall they hung on.
We don't know whether they belonged to the same family, or whether they came together only much later. We don't know whether they hung beside a front door, above a bed, or in a corner of a room devoted to prayer.
And we certainly cannot know how many hands touched the water they once contained.
The religion of ordinary things
Large religious objects survive rather well.
Churches are protected. Altarpieces are restored. Statues enter museums. Their makers and patrons are researched and their histories recorded.
Objects like these usually disappear.
They were inexpensive, personal and commonplace. When fashions changed, houses were emptied or families moved away, there was little reason to preserve them. Their importance had never depended upon monetary value.
Their significance came from repetition.
Fill the little basin with holy water.
Dip a finger.
Make the sign of the cross.
Leave for work, school, the fields, the market or a journey.
Return home.
Repeat.
The object itself hardly changes, but around it an entire life passes.
And in Szentgotthárd that life could have passed through extraordinary changes. By the beginning of the twentieth century the town had developed into an unusually active industrial centre for Vas County. Then came the First World War and the Treaty of Trianon, which transformed this previously internal region of the Austro-Hungarian world into a borderland, leaving much of Szentgotthárd's surrounding territory on the other side of new national frontiers.
If these fonts really date from around 1890–1920, as their style suggests, they belong precisely to that world.
But that is where the evidence stops.
It is tempting to imagine an old Szentgotthárd family carrying them through the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, two world wars and the Communist period. It would make an excellent story.
There is simply no evidence that it happened.
All we actually know is that the objects survived and eventually appeared together in Szentgotthárd.
For The Cabinet, that is enough.
Because perhaps the most interesting thing about them isn't who manufactured them or even exactly when.
It is that somebody once considered these little pieces of porcelain important enough to put on a wall.
Not as decoration.
As part of everyday life.
And every morning, before stepping through the door and into a world they could not control, there was one small gesture they could make.
A touch of water.
The sign of the cross.
And then out into the world.
THE OBJECT
Probable date: c. 1890–1920
Origin: Central Europe, exact place of manufacture unknown
Maker: Unknown
Material: Glazed moulded porcelain, hand-painted decoration and gilding
Objects: Two domestic holy-water fonts
Decoration: One depicting St Anthony of Padua with the Christ Child; second figure unidentified
Marks: Impressed numbers 158 and 164
Dimensions: 12cm
Found: Szentgotthárd, Hungary
STATUS: COLLECTION
This object is currently not for sale.
