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 When the Gates of Asia opened The Travels and Treasures of Ferenc Hopp 
Systematic collecting of Far-Eastern art began in the second half of the 19th century. From the end of the century, beside the Oriental collections of significant museums, like the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, the Louvre, and the Ermitage, a whole range of public Oriental collections were established, which were mostly based on private collections. The first Far-Eastern collection in Central Europe was founded in Budapest in 1919, in compliance with the will of Ferenc Hopp, a patron of arts, globe-trotter and art collector. He bequeathed his Oriental collection of four thousand items and his villa to the Hungarian state, stipulating that it house an Oriental art museum. His collection came to form the basis of the Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and Southeast-Asian collections of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts. 
As the owner of the Calderony company, which sold school equipment and photographic tools, travelled around the world five times between 1882 and 1914. On his more frequent travels he regularly took photos and showed them at a lot of successful shows and exhibitions; according to the Hopp Memorial Book, published in his honour in 1985, he 'took photographs of the whole world'I. At the gate of the East At the end of the 19th century, the first station of voyages to the Far-East was Port Said, the port of the Suez Canal in Egypt, founded in 1859. Suez Canal connects Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea to Suez on the Red Sea had a huge trading significance. Port Said was a necessary coal-loading place for ships and the first destination for journeys around the world. The globe-trotter bought his travel needs. In the bazaars, all sorts of treasures from the Middle- and Far-East were sold. II. Hopp in India Ferenc Hopp visited India on his first journey around the world, between 25th December 1882 and 5th March 1883. During his two-month journey in India he travelled around the continent. He arrived in Calcutta, then he visited Darjeeling, where he visited the tomb of Alexander Csoma de Kőrös, then carried on to Benares, Agra (where he admired the famous Taj Mahal by moonlight), Delhi and Jaipur. Crossing India he headed south and visited Bombay, Madras, Pondicherry and Tanjore. 
His purchased objects illustrate his experiences, that is why we can call them souvenirs rather than the result of a conscious collecting motion. Because he mainly purchased art objects of the period and easily accessible objects, which were liked by contemporary travellers, his collection shows us an insight of the objective culture of India at the end of the 19th century.After circling Australia, he arrived to Batavia (Jakarta) in on November 23. From there he went to Buitenzorg 40 miles away, where the director guided him through the famous botanical garden founded by the Dutch. Buitenzorg made such a deep impression on him that, after purchasing the villa on Andrássy Street, he built an Oriental garden around it. He liked to call his home the Buitenzorg villa.
III. In the Heavenly Empire 
Hopp stepped on Chinese soil for the first time in March 1883 during his first trip around the world. Hong Kong, the southern seaport founded under British colonial rule, was the first station. He took a jaunt to Macao then sailed up the Pearl River to Canton (Guangzhou). He took in the sights of this truly Chinese city on foot and by palanquin in two and a half days. Canton enchanted him. 'I would like to stay here longer,' he wrote to Budapest. He sailed north along the coast of China with stopovers in Amoy (now Xiamen), Fuzhou, Wenzhou, Shanghai and Peking. His second trip to China in 1903 took him to the northeastern part of the country. He arrived from the Korean Peninsula. He stopped in Tienjin for a few days, then travelled to Beijing to visit places seen twenty years earlier. He left China by train to transfer to the Trans-Siberian railway in order to reach Europe. Hopp entered China for the third time in 1914. In the crown colony of Hong Kong he was astonished at the changes in the city compared to his last visit 30 years earlier. He spent his ten-day stay by shopping and visiting different collections, then after visiting Formoza Island (Taiwan) he sailed towards Shanghai and Peking, but he changed his original plan and did not visit Beijing. From Shanghai he travelled to Japan (Yokohama). IV. The long-awaited stopover: Japan Hopp was in Japan three times. On his first visit, in May 1883, he visited Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Otsu, Biwa Lake then Yokohama. The second time, in the summer of 1903, he could admire the beauties of the island country. Ashore in Yokohama he looked for the well-known typical Japanese street scenes, which he wanted to see so much in vain. Everything was formed to the European model. Yokohama was one of the centres of the Japanese art trade and the export of art pieces was especially significant. Numerous art shops and curio-shops offered their wares to tourists. Hopp travelled from Yokohama to Tokyo, visited the sights of the capital and had a trip to the Great Buddha sculpture in Kamakura, than travelled on to Hakone. He visited Nagoya, than Kyoto and Nara and carried on to Osaka. Touching Kobe, he left the island country through Nagasaki harbour. The third time he visited Japan in the spring of 1914. He visited Nagasaki, Tokyo and Yokohama. Curators of the exhbition: Györgyi Fajcsák PhD, Béla Kelényi Period in which the exhbition may be viewed: 21 June 2008 to 29 November, 2009, every day (except Monday): 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. The Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts 103 Andrássy út Budapest H-1062 Information: (+36-1) 322-8476 www.hoppmuzeum.com PEACH BLOSSOM AND MOHAMMEDAN BLUE The Art of Chinese Ceramics Exhibition at the György Ráth Museum
The exhibition displays the major types of objects and techniques of the last 2,000 years of Chinese ceramics in chronological order. The funerary ceramic objects represent the 7th–9th century Chinese conception of the otherworld. Most of these figures show scenes of everyday life; they depict people (servants, aristocrats, merchants, musicians), animals (camels, horses etc.) and buildings (farmyards, residential buildings, watch-towers) and thus the visitor has the opportunity to have an insight into the life of a one-time China. The classical period of Chinese ceramics falls on the era between the 10th and the 13th centuries. As a consequence of their subdued harmony and beauty, the pieces manufactured in this period are considered as the finest Chinese ceramics. Of the most important ceramics types of the Song era, our exhibition displays ding ceramics, yun objects, qingbai (that is, early bluish white porcelain), iian ceramics, Cizhou vessels and the characteristic green-glazed Longquan ceramics.
Everywhere in China ceramic figures were used to decorate buildings. The figures stood in a long line, one after the other, from the rafter to the bending end of the eaves and were meant to protect the house from evil spirits. Besides the statues depicting mythical animals and grotesque-faced anthropomorphic creatures in dynamic movement, a large number of rafter and finial elements enhanced the sight of Chinese buildings. Europe got to know Chinese porcelain through the blue-and-white porcelain. It is without doubt that the use of under-glaze blue painting was one of the most significant inventions of the Chinese art of ceramics. From the end of the 14th century tens of thousands of porcelain objects (meant to be used in the court of the Emperor) were manufactured in Yingdezhen (Yiangxi province). It was also Yingdezhen that became the centre of the manufacturing of the blue-and-white pieces prepared for export and, later, the centre of the manufacturing of coloured porcelains. A large number of manufactures operated here; the size and significance of the city is illustrated by the fact that by the 18th century its population was 2,000,000. The last great period of the Chinese art of ceramics fell on the 18th century. The shades of the monochrome porcelains and porcelains decorated with overglaze polychrome painting ranged from yellow to black. The exhibition displays the popular objects of Chinese aristocrats; besides, a whole room is dedicated to illuminate the great variety of forms, perfection of technique and beauty characteristic of the Chinese ceramics produced in the period of the Quing dynasty. The last section of the exhibition gives an insight into the trade of Chinese ceramics. The trade aiming at Southeast Asia and the Middle East is 900 years old, while Europe discovered the so-called 'white gold' (as Chinese porcelain was called) from the 16th century on. Chinese porcelain arriving to Europe came to the palaces of the English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Netherlander aristocrats as keels of ships carrying spices. The East Indian Companies were quick to find out that the Chinese porcelains, if adopted to European taste and eating customs would be a marketable commodity – a fact lively illustrated by the shapes and ornamentation (the latter conforming the style of European engravings) of the porcelain objects exhibited.
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