Begovácz Rózsa – Burján István – Vándor Andrea: Folk Art in Baranya County (Pécs, 2008)

Interieurs, Furniture

Painted furniture was replaced by flogged or single coloured furniture, and later by manufactured goods. In the traditional system every piece had its function, with a number of traditional customs attached to it. With the decomposition of traditions these customs disappeared, the old pieces of furniture began wandering getting new places in the house before being sold or demolished. Among Hungarian peasants it was undoubtedly some form of the chest to be used first. We have data from as early as the end of the 13

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h century about the use of carpentered or hewn chests in Hungary. In contemporary documents we find the name scrinium - this name lived on through Slavic transmission in the word szökröny in South Transdanubia. This type of chest is called szuszék on the Hungarian Plains and in former Upper Hungary and kócsag in Slavonia. The two earliest data refer to the 1389 chest from Merse (Somogy county) and the 1513 chest from Dencsháza (Baranya county). Their material is always hardwood, usually beech. In our collection some of the chests in the Ormánság are made of oak. A basic characteristic of the making of these chests is that the material used was always trimmed wood, carved without saw and plane. The building together of the parts is by interlocking, not by joining by tenon and mortise. Their exterior is covered exclusively with engraved 13