Király Fanni

“In the performance of The Jungle Book two dozen of dresses are playing. To create the sets of accessoires for the dresses was a fairly exciting work. We gathered duck bones at a wedding party, from the sea we carried home five kilos of shells.  You could imagine what a creative work was. The result was fantastic, the audience highly enjoyed the spectacle. I love the theatre. It is a hectic world, but it needs your versatility. Mediaeval and noble patina is required for the great classics, for the works of Shakespeare. I found some English literature in the library.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               .

As I was learned, to produce a permanent coating you need to soak the cooper in different solutions for days. Being encouraged, we made a team of applied arts, of leather and textile specialists, and we created the modernized versions of eighteen Middle Age dresses. My job was to produce the buckles, the buttons and jewelry. The exhibition was a great success.”

I make statuettes, using solid, cast materials. At the University of Arts and Crafts I learned the technique of lost-wax (”cire perdue”) casting. I carve the pattern from hard wax of dentists, the pattern will be placed to the molding material. Then casting of vacuum-filling follows. This procedure is unlike to the nowadays goldsmiths’ work, for example, which uses golden wire or plate to frame precious stones. I prefer silver.

Her workshop is a cool island in the summer heat. Sipping ice water in the airy terrace, we are trying to get rid of the daze. Bodza, the dog wants to play. Her house is packed with objects connected to her creativity. Marbles, corals, semiprecious stones from a fair, small piece of exotic woods, ivory piano keys from a friend. All of them are a part of a reasoned thematic.

Most of the work is to design and to pattern. She is working with lost-wax casting, what she learned at the College. The model is carved from hard dental wax, then it is covered by the mold. Then comes the vacuum casting. This method is differing from what the modern gold and silversmiths are applied, they are using plates or wires to chase mainly semiprecious stones. She makes a rubber flong of her each jewel, so it can be reproduced later. Copies gain unique form by variegated patterns and exciting inlays.

An unviolated piece of a Japanese silk kimono, or a nice fragment of an old Afghan cloth are fit to her jewellery of “textile rescue”. To detect these pieces you need an expert eye. It is a great fun when colours and patterns turn up in cleaning. To rescue these natural and precious textiles is a tribute to the tradition and our ancestors. “One of my friends makes the Japanese pearl fabric using tiny glass pearls of perfect size, fitting precisely to the setting”. On the desk in front of the window are blueprints, an old anvil, and few fine graters. “My father is an engraver, he made me this hammer” – she explains origin and respect of the well-trimmed tool. Well, it is easy!

Her career

1997: Master of Arts (metal working), University of Arts and Crafts, Budapest. Her activity extends to design of jewellery, coins, awards, and ornatures in theatre, drawing teaching. Her jewels are arranged in series, characterized by a specific material (e.g. parchments, pieces of antique carpets, fragments of old objects).

13/11/2010 Érd

Awards:

1994: Rubik scholarship to the University of Industrial Art, Helsinki

1996: Moholy-Nagy Design Fellowship

1998: L. Kozma Fellowship of crafts

2006: Creative fellowship of National Culture Fund

2009: Special award, 7th Biennale of Goldsmith Arts