As we consider 21st century stamps, I wonder if we have defined down too far who was deserving of a stamp issue. As we get into pretty obscure figures, there is more chance of learning new stories. The guy today even died under mysterious circumstances in a brothel. I hope I have not just given Hungary an idea who to put on their next 45 stamp issue. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
I was drawn to this stamp by the dull colors that defined Hungarian stamps after the cold war regime and the bright colored kid oriented farm out issues of that period to before the modern era where the look and feel of those issues has been recreated. Looking up the stamp however shows it part of a 45 stamp issue that came out over twelve years. Was Hungary that important in furniture? It isn’t now though nearby Germany and Poland are big exporters of furniture. China is far and away the largest producer.
Todays stamp is issue A1091, a 200 Florint stamp issued by Hungary in 2001. 7 stamps of the ultimate 45 came out that year. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.
This stamp features a settee made by furniture maker Sebestyen Vogel in 1810. Mr. Vogel’s family came from Saxony in Germany but his father died when he was 6 and the next year his widowed mother remarried a guild belonging furniture wood joiner in Budapest. After working in his stepfather’s shop he got a valuable apprenticeship in Vienna. Remember this was the period of Hapsburg rule of both places. Returning to Budapest, Vogel had great ambitions that would see his furniture widely exported to places like Russia and Transylvania. He thought that the volume of Hungarian wood needed would expand new avenues of trade. With this as a premise, he petitioned the Kaiser to be allowed the use of duty free Royal warehouse located in many cities throughout the empire. After several years, Vogel was granted what he sought and his workshop employed over 130 furniture builders and was tied for the biggest furniture operation in the Empire, and the largest in Budapest.
The furniture style being made was not original. More ornate/gaudy versions of French styles called Egyptized. It was the time of Napoleon. The concern was also able to do copies of the German Biedermeier style and the British Hepplewhite style.
By the 1820s, the style of the furniture changed but not due to developing something unique. Rather the commissions coming in were for standardized simple designs appropriate for government and big business offices.
I can find no work of what became of Vogel’s workshop after his death in the Theresianstadt brothel in 1837 at age 58. Not much of the furniture survives although the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest has a few pieces including the settee on the stamp.
Well my drink is empty. Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.