A gyűjtemény leírása
The core material for the Indonesia Collection, now comprising some four thousand objects, was collected between the end of the 19th century and the outbreak of World War I by János Xántus, Sámuel Teleki, Giovanni Bettanin, the Ethnographic Mission, Árpád Karácson, Ernő Zboray, and Oszkár Vojnich.
The collection is founded upon the material collected by János Xántus during his expedition to East and South-east Asia in 1869 and 1870, including 500 objects brought from the South-east Asian islands of Borneo, Sumatra, The Celebes, Java, The Sulus, Aru, and Timor. Meriting special mention, both for its complexity and for the high quality of its material, is an assemblage of objects purchased from the Dajaks of Borneo. Not only is the Dajak material the most complete grouping within the collection, it is also the result of nearly six months of carefully planned ethnographic field work. Material collected from the wajangs, the famous puppet plays of Java, by Ernő Zboray in the first half of the 20th century was added to the collection only after World War II, as were several pieces from a Javanese gamelan musical group.
In terms of geographic distribution, approximately half the objects in the collection originate from the two rather minor territories of Java and Borneo, each making up about one-fourth of the total Indonesian holdings. The material from Borneo provides the most complete ethnographic picture of the culture it represents, with artefacts related to lifestyle present on a broad scale. About one-third of the collection consists of weapons, including spears, krises, swords, knives, arrows, shields, and blowguns. The most valuable pieces in the collection are to be found among the assemblage of shields collected by János Xántus in Borneo and the weapons (krises and parangs) and statuary purchased from Giovanni Bettanin.
The curator of the collection is Gábor Wilhelm Ph.D.