The glass plate negatives of the Hungarian National Museum

Hungarian National Museum

text: Zsuzsanna Hajnal

Digitising glass plate negatives with the Phase One XF camera and the Film Capture Stage accessory

Besides priceless artefacts, the collections of the Hungarian National Museum also include two rooms’ worth of glass plate negatives, which mainly depict the condition of objects when they were acquired, as well as former exhibition installations. In many cases these photographs are our only surviving information and document about treasures that were scattered or destroyed in the storms of history. A further group of the glass plate negatives consists of photographs taken of objects that were offered for purchase to the Hungarian National Museum. At the time no agreement could be reached with the art dealer, so the objects were only photographed and in the end did not enter the collection. These objects have not surfaced since in any exhibition or known collection, with a few exceptions: e.g. two early Migration Period objects identifiable from the photographs went to the Dumbarton Oaks Collection, and a third to the British Museum. At the beginning of the 20th century the MNM also had a good number of objects from the collections of other museums photographed, for an exhibition or as illustrations for a book or study written for a professional audience. Alongside our original artefacts, preserving these photographs on glass plate negatives is also of special importance. The preservation digitisation of the glass plates is an urgent task, because in many cases it may take years before they can reach the museum conservation workshops, which struggle with a lack of resources and specialists. During the 2017 MuseumDigit conference, mass digitisation was demonstrated at the Tripont CHS stand using endangered glass plate negatives of the Hungarian National Museum. Over the two days of the conference about 250 images were archived electronically by conservation digitisation. The black-and-white photographs were made in the first third of the 20th century and are in themselves important relics of the photographic technique of the time. At present the Data Repository of the Hungarian National Museum keeps – together with several thousand other glass plate negatives – the object photographs digitised in 2017–2018. We digitised the glass plate negatives as a “Pilot Project”; alongside the urgent conservation, we thereby tested the Phase One equipment of Tripont CHS and prepared the possible future digitisation of the other objects.

A short selection of the digitised glass plate negatives

N492 The cup from the Hunnic sacrificial find of Szeged-Nagyszéksós in its crumpled state after discovery

A small electrum cup from the Hunnic-period sacrificial find, which is also commemorated in Ferenc Móra’s short story Kincsásás halottal (Digging for Treasure with a Corpse), reached the National Museum. From several places in the Carpathian Basin we know find assemblages containing weapons, horse harness, furniture, vessels, other utensils and elements of dress (clothing, belts) that were burnt on a pyre in the course of some ceremony; of these, the one found at Nagyszéksós stands far out in wealth and rank. We can presumably link it to the funerary ceremony of a very distinguished Hun warrior, of which we can also get an idea from the genuine, authentic description of Attila’s funeral. (For this, we recommend to lovers of fiction Móra’s other short story, Leszámolás Attilával (Reckoning with Attila).) The cup arrived at the museum badly burnt and crumpled; its original coloured glass inlay was destroyed in the fire, but the runic inscription on its foot survived intact. The conservators of the National Museum restored the shape of the cup, and it can be seen in this form in the permanent archaeological exhibition.

The record of the object on the glass plate negative on the Treasures of the Hungarian National Museum (A Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum Kincsei, online collection database) site: http://opac3.mnm.monguz.hu:32080/hu/record/-/record/MNMMUSEUM1131036

Nagyszéksós – cup with a runic inscription on its foot (detail)

N74 and N193 Side view and base of the Hun cauldron from Hőgyész in its state before restoration

Among the archaeological remains of the Huns, the characteristic bronze cauldrons of Asian origin are important. They are usually found buried in shallow pits, always in a damaged state. They cooked in them during some kind of feast or sacrificial ceremony, then buried them together with the remains of the meal and the pyre, far from their former settlements or at their very edge. The vessel shown in the picture was found on the bank of the Kapos river between Hőgyész and Regöly; similar ones are known in good number from the steppe east of the Carpathians. Its original, intact state was restored, but for this an itinerant wire-mender (“drótos tót”) who specialised in patching vessels had to be found to carry out the work, which proved a particularly difficult task in Pest at the end of the 19th century.

The record of the object on the glass plate negative on the Treasures of the Hungarian National Museum site: http://opac3.mnm.monguz.hu:32080/hu/record/-/record/MNMMUSEUM1127504

N366 and N290 5th-century treasure find from Șimleu Silvaniei (Szilágysomlyó)

The record of the objects on the glass plate negative on the Treasures of the Hungarian National Museum site: http://opac3.mnm.monguz.hu:32080/hu/record/-/record/MNMMUSEUM725243 (onyx fibula)

Base of the Hőgyész cauldron

N288 and N293 Front and back of one of the fibulae of the Șimleu Silvaniei hoard before restoration

In 1891 the ethnographer Balázs Orbán, spending the night in a village near Cluj-Napoca, noticed a group of strange objects that his host showed him. Regarding the gold objects covered with a white layer, he immediately telegraphed the then Director-General of the Hungarian National Museum to come at once as well, because something really big had been found. While potatoes were being planted, three cups, a large man’s clothing pin with an onyx stone, and 10 pairs of ornaments fastening women’s clothing at both shoulders (fibulae), as well as an oath ring, had turned up out of the ground. The unparalleled treasure was hidden at the end of the Hun period; the jewellery probably belonged to the attire of very high-ranking Germanic nobles (presumably the Gepid king and his family). The place itself was not unknown to archaeologists: on the same plot at Șimleu Silvaniei, almost 1,000 years earlier, another unique assemblage of gold objects had come to light, with Roman commemorative medallions and a gold chain with pendants depicting miniature tools and weapons. This first treasure went straight into the Habsburg imperial treasury and can be seen today in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The archive photographs have preserved for us the original state of the heavily repaired and supplemented objects, helping greatly with their latest restoration and cleaning carried out this year, during which, with the photographs to go by, we dared to remove a part of the earlier synthetic-resin supplements so that the traces of use, wear and repairs on the objects can again be seen and studied.

The record of the object on the glass plate negative on the Treasures of the Hungarian National Museum site: http://opac3.mnm.monguz.hu:32080/hu/record/-/record/MNMMUSEUM979079

Șimleu Silvaniei hoard – overall view

N200 (the suspension lug of the sword; N96 the whole sword) The Avar sword of Kunágota

In the mid-19th century at Kunágota the grave of an Avar warrior was disturbed, and its finds were sent to the museum by post: a gold-mounted weapon belt of Byzantine pattern, silver horse-harness ornaments, fragments of a silver cup and jug, a gold ring, an earring, and the gold ornaments of a sword. The iron of the sword, because of its size (it was longer than 1 metre), was not accepted by the post as an ordinary consignment, so it did not reach the museum. The gold plates covering the hilt and scabbard of the sword are unique. These plates originally covered a Byzantine casket, which was cut up and used for the weapon, presumably decorated exclusively for the funeral ceremony.

The record of the object on the glass plate negative on the Treasures of the Hungarian National Museum site: http://opac3.mnm.monguz.hu:32080/hu/record/-/record/MNMMUSEUM1361581

N363 Mounts of a 7th-century weapon belt of Western European pattern from the territory of the Avar empire

(the so-called “Jankovich Gold”)

The gold mounts were parts of a Western-type weapon belt. They are interesting not only because they come from the collection of the famous art collector Miklós Jankovich, purchased in 1836, which forms one of the earliest cores of the National Museum, but also because they are outstanding examples of the nomadic type of state and social structure observable in the empire of the Avars in the 7th century. They came from the most prestigious male burial known in the territory of the Avar Khaganate (presumably in southern Transdanubia), where the warrior was buried with a weapon belt of Western Germanic pattern. Together with the evidence of the Kölked cemeteries, it proves that under Avar rule some subject peoples could continue to live under their own leaders, preserving their wealth and weapon-use customs as well as their excellent Western connections with the Germanic states of contemporary Europe.

The record of the object on the glass plate negative on the Treasures of the Hungarian National Museum site: http://opac3.mnm.monguz.hu:32080/hu/record/-/record/MNMMUSEUM1361566

Jankovich Gold

Gallery

A selection of further digitised glass plate negatives from the collection of the Hungarian National Museum