“The Mental Constitution of the Hungarian Winemaker”

Sándor Bodnár’s Ex Libris Collection of Grapes and Wine

Abstract

The cultural history of the vine is closely intertwined with the history of humankind. Among Hungary’s 22 wine regions, Tokaj-Hegyalja is the world’s first closed and Hungary’s most historically renowned wine region, which was inscribed in the World Heritage List in 2002 under the name Tokaj Wine Region Historic Cultural Landscape. One type of the diverse motifs of ex libris, which today function as autonomous works of graphic art, is grape- and wine-themed bookplates, typically commissioned by viticulturists and oenologists living in various wine regions. For many of them, this way of life is passed down from generation to generation, and one way of transmitting this lifestyle to the fine arts is through the representation of the theme in graphic works.
Through the collection of Sándor Bodnár (1939–2020), a horticultural engineer and winemaker from Sátoraljaújhely, this study presents grape- and wine-themed ex libris as mnemotopoi (sites of memory) and as carriers of national character, along with the narratives and relational networks attached to them. For Bodnár, commissioning and collecting small graphic works related to viticulture and winemaking constituted a form of self-expression intimately tied to his profession. Over the two decades of the 1970s and 1980s, the Bodnár collection expanded through international exchange to around 5000 items. Alongside Norbert Lippóczy’s grape- and wine-themed collection – continuously presented to the Hungarian Museum of Agriculture –, Bodnár’s became one of the most significant collections of this kind, both in Hungary and abroad. As graphic and cultural-historical visual documents illustrating grape and wine culture, the ex vinis bookplates display diverse motifs and great variability. The study offers an insight into their types by presenting the finest pieces of the Bodnár collection, including works by numerous renowned graphic artists.