Zsolnay Cat

Miklos Zsolnay took Zsolnay into the international market place by establishing showrooms in Paris and Vienna for their luxury goods. His brother-in-law, Tade Sikorsky became Zsolnay’s chief designer while his sisters, Terez and Julia, contributed their designs and artworks to the firm. Julia Zsolnay (1856–1950) in particular influenced Zsolnay’s evolving artistic style. Beginning in 1895, she studied painting and ceramics in Munich, Vienna and Paris. As evidenced by her membership in the Hungarian Fine Arts Society; the Art Society in Vienna; and the Society of Women Artists in Munich, Julia Zsolnay was active in many European artistic communities where she would have had the opportunity to share ideas and absorb the latest artistic trends such as the Symbolist and the Jugendstil ethos. During the first decade of the 20th century, cats were especially popular subjects. The striking posters that Theodore Steinlen created in the 1890s for the earliest cabaret, Le Chat Noir in Paris had struck a nerve. In the exciting but uncertain new century, the cat was a perfect symbol of ambiguity: it stood as an expression of both domesticity and a feral nature. The cat is serene, proud, aloof and sensual; the cat is also mischievous, willful, independent and wild.