Dealing with interior and furniture design, as well as other areas of creativity, Dušan Janković (1894–1950) consistently expressed his modernist sensibility. The styles of the past are not the origin of his work, except for the effort to modernize Yugoslav folk ornamentation, which was in accordance with the taste of the era. His interiors from the twenties are the epitome of Art Deco. Richly painted walls and ceilings, with an abundance of floral and geometric ornamentation, they are characteristic of the author’s entire work during the first decade of his creativity. Figural compositions, and in the spirit of de-radicalized Cubism, he rarely represented (Kasina, 1923; Moulin rouge, 1925). The painting of wall surfaces will remain relevant even during the thirties, when Janković left the previous patterns. The surviving sketches for the villa in Saint- Cloud (1934) show that he devised a discrete geometric ornament of a series of short parallel lines by combining, which achieved dynamism and variety. The furniture designed by Janković, from the very beginning in 1924, is extremely functional, reduced in form and devoid of ornamentation, while decorativeness is achieved by a covering with veneers of an interesting structure and contrasting color. With rare exceptions (the project for Jovan Cvijić’s house, 1925), he will create in this manner in the 1930s, when furniture design will occupy a more important place in his work. Like his contemporaries inclined to modernization trends, Janković thought about the rationalization of space and its functional furnishing, that is, about multi-purpose, easily portable and foldable furniture, in the production of which new materials and technologies have a corresponding importance. It is the furniture that shows how consistent Janković remained with his youthful conviction that the goal of applied art is the harmony of the purpose of the object with the material from which it is made, as well as striving for harmony of the whole and details, whereby decorative elements are unnecessary.

Translated by Tatjana Nišić

The subject of this paper is the work of fashion designer Milorad Miki Ignjić (1942 - 2017), who in the period from the mid-sixties to the mid-nineties of the 20^th century achieved extraordinary success, primarily as a designer of accessories. The aim of this work is to show, for the first time, the entire work of Milorad Ignjić, whose name was known, until now, only among experts, and whose contribution to the development and success of the Yugoslav fashion industry on the world market, in the mentioned period, was significant. Ignjić’s career began with architecture studies but then, due to circumstances, he started to create film and theater costumes (for a while he was an assistant costume designer at the National Theater in Belgrade) and after his encounter with the fashion designer Aleksandar Joksimović, he started to work in fashion design. At the same time, his career shows the path of a designer through all areas of fashion design: from the creation of work uniforms, women’s, men’s and children’s clothing collections, knitwear, to the design of men’s and women’s handbags and travel bags. In this work we tried to represent Ignjić’s entire creativity in fashion design from haute couture as, in his words, the essence of artistic expression, from which then arise the variations for the textile industry and ready-made clothing, the fields in which he also worked in. We tried to define the basic characteristics of his style in creating accessories, but also in fashion illustration as an important part of his work. The variety of his work opens the possibility for further researches of the individual parts of Ignjić’s fashion design.

Translated by the author

U retkim pokušajima antropološkog tumačenja običaja lomljenja staklenih čaša u kafanama na našim prostorima govori se o postupku informisanja okoline o prelasku u izmenjeno stanje svesti. Ovaj rad bavi se, sa jedne strane, analizom pitanja nastalih tokom istraživanja za izložbu Pazi lomljivo: stakleni narativi, polomljene istorije (Public Space With A Roof – Amsterdam i Skver magazin – Zaječar, održane u Muzeju primenjene umetnosti Beograd, 29. decembar 2022 – 15. januar 2023) i, sa druge strane, mogućnostima čitanja i tumačenja socijalističke prošlosti na osnovu fragmenata pronađenih u nekadašnjoj fabrici Kristal – Zaječar. Posebna pažnja posvećena je otkriću nekoliko stotina rolni fotografskih negativa, sakrivenih u smetlištu nekadašnje fabrike kristala, bez kojih se razumevanje proizvodnje stakla u Srbiji nakon Drugog svetskog rata čini nemogućim. Kroz neobičnu dijalektiku, fragmenti stakla postaju „čitljivi” zahvaljujući preživelim slikama iz prošlosti, dok narativ istorije koju pronađeni negativi stvaraju postaje destabilizovan ovom srčom od kristala. Pored toga, ispostavilo se da su teoretska razmatranja statusa negativa u istoriji fotografije fragmentarna i gotovo nepostojeća, a taj propust ovaj rad želi da ispravi. Naime, potencijal negativa da pruži različite verzije zabeleženog trenutka pruža nam i jedinstvenu mogućnost pisanja verzija istorije koje odstupaju od usvojenih narativa, stvarajući novo polje za razumevanje prelaska u novu, postsocijalističku „normalnost”, o kojoj nam možda govore tone pronađenog razbijenog stakla.

The National Museum in Arandjelovac has been bequeathed a valuable collection of contemporary artistic ceramics, formed due to the activities of the international World of Ceramics Symposium from 1974 until today. By means of this collection, we can follow the development of the Yugoslav/Serbian art scene, as well as the influence of foreign creative tendencies on the artistic ceramics practice in this region. The forming of this collection was influenced by numerous factors such as the general social, political and economic conditions in the country, although the role of the selectors was practically the most conclusive. During the implementation of the 2022 exhibition “Transformation of ceramic painting” by the National Museum in Arandjelovac in 2022, artworks were selected from the museum collection with the main goal of completing the general analysis of the ceramic painting development, starting with the first panels that were made with a potentially decorative purpose to those that contain modernist and postmodernist tendencies and finally, to the installation artworks created during the past few years. The aim of this work is to point out the beginnings and possible role models and then to present the existence, representation and transformation of ceramic painting in the art in this region from the seventh decade of the 20^th century by using exclusive museum material created at the World of Ceramics Symposium. The transformation has been occurring gradually, by means of expanding the conventional boundaries of the ceramic material to the including of new ones, and the application of different methodological approaches which have given art objects numerous new meanings.

Translated by the author

Public collections of clothes are one of the main sources for the studies of fashion in Serbia during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The basic selection criteria during the formation of these collections were the aesthetic and artistic values of fashion items, as well as their national symbolics. For that reason, researchers of 19^th and early 20^th-century Serbian fashion often have to cope with insufficiently documented and systematized thesauri, undeveloped terminology, and a lack of information. The biographies of individual items are a segment of the thesaurus documentation that has not been given enough attention; today for many of them we have no information when and by whom they were worn. Using the example of three museum fashion items – dresses, MAA, accession nos. 5593, 5207, and 22891 from the collection of the Museum of Applied Art in Belgrade, which were made and worn as wedding dresses in Serbia in the period from 1878 to 1911 – this paper follows the use and development of their documentary measure through interpretation and communication at various museum exhibitions. By comparing the dynamics of their presentation, we can conclude that, in addition to the collecting and exhibition policy of the museum, as well as the properties of the object itself, the documentary measure has an important role in the interpretation and communication of museum thesauri and fashion. In the present time, the three dresses in the Museum, as fashion items worn in Serbia in the past, not only inform us about changes in fashion trends. Considered a part of visual culture, they testify to different cultural models, ideological and social frameworks in which trends were created and developed.

Translated by the author

The portrait of the founder of the Church of the Virgin Mary in Donja Kamenica has attracted attention by its unusual exemplar of covering and decorating the head, i.e. the headdress. It consists of a cap, two scarves and jewelry in the form of earrings, as well as a diadem and metal applications. The unusualness of this headdress is reflected in the combination of elements that form a complex structure with no adequate example in 14^th century medieval portrait fresco painting. The ktitor wears a cap of an unusual shape, for which it is impossible to find similar examples among the portraits of the landlady. It is difficult to determine the material from which it was made, although it was unquestionably a template in the styling of the headpiece with two scarves. The case of wearing two scarves is well known, albeit not in combination with a cap. The shape of the cap of the founder of Donja Kamenica remains unidentified, but examples of folk clothing in the area of the Timok Valley point to a regional variety that may have originated from folk costumes. This complex headdress is decorated with expensive jewelry in the form of lunula earrings, combined with metal applications. Compared with the portraits of other noblewomen and archaeological findings, it has been established that it involves a more recent type of jewelry made using complex techniques of gold or silver and with the application of pearls. The portrait, or more precisely the headdress of the founder of Donja Kamenica, reflects a woman’s desire and need for beautification, though in accordance with the potentials of her family and following current trends, while at the same time making a connection with the local forms of clothing.

Translated by the author

Self-taught artist Jovan J. Pešić (1886-1936), whose heterogeneous activity covers the period 1897-1934, left behind a number of ideas in the fields of architecture, caricature and sculpture. The main source for the study of Pešić’s oeuvre, which has not been systematically researched until now, was the Graphic Collection of the National Library of Serbia, which stores three hundred and ninety of Pešić’s drawings, sketches, caricatures and architectural projects, as well as photographs from the front from the period of World War I and sketches of weapons from the interwar period. The paper maps the key points of Pešić’s professional path based on a review of the original material, as well as a relevant literature in which the activity of this insufficiently researched artist is mentioned in fragments. In the interpretation of the artist’s designs of armored vehicles and vessels from the interwar period, the assistance of experts from the Military Museum in Belgrade was significant. Jovan Pešić cannot be categorized as a classic profiled artist but rather a visionary who, following Inkiostri’s idea, transmits elements of Serbian spiritual tradition and folk character. He will be remembered for a large number of unrealized projects, but also as the creator of different and innovative conceptual solutions of varying quality in the field of fine and applied arts. Trying to understand Pešić’s ambitious ideas in the field of applied art and craftsmanship, we are faced with the fact that his oeuvre remained in the shadow of the great Serbian sculptures and cartoonists from the beginning of the twentieth century.

Translated by the author

The Glass Factory Ukras (Ornament) from Alibunar was built in 1966 as an interstate cooperation project between Hungary and Yugoslavia. Its production system was established with the help of technologists, engineers and equipment from Hungary, and eight top glass masters from four Hungarian glass factories came to Alibunar to start production in May 1967. In a relatively short time, the factory mastered the techniques of high-quality hand-shaped, blown and pressed glass for household and hospitality industry needs, working on two pot furnaces which used natural gas as fuel. In the second half of the 70s, Miloš Krsmanović (b. 1957) joined the factory staff, and became and remains its chief designer. In its zenith, the glass factory exported products to Germany, Italy, France and the USA, though most of its goods were marketed on the territory of Yugoslavia. During the second half of the 1980s, the Alibunar glass factory achieved significant cooperation with the famous Sebastijan Gallery and designer Emilia Marodić. Unfortunately, the factory shared the fate of the numerous factories that failed during the transition period. Its furnaces were shut down in 2009, and the factory went into bankruptcy in 2012, from which it never recovered. The Glass Factory Ukras was the smallest modern glass factory in Serbia and the former Yugoslavia and the only producer of hand-blown and pressed glass in the province of Vojvodina. In its 42-year history, it has produced millions of tons of glass for the domestic and foreign markets, with the production of almost 1,000 items.

Translated by the author