A Debreceni Déri Múzeum Évkönyve 1981 (Debrecen, 1983)

Néprajz - Cs. Tábori Hajnalka: Peasant Mirrors with Painted Carved Frames in the Déri Museum

Hajnalka Cs. Tábori PEASANT MIRRORS WITH PAINTED CARVED FRAMES IN THE DÉRI MUSEUM In the ethnographic collection of the Déri Museum there are 30 wall-mirrors. The use of such mirrors with beautifully carved and painted frames with pierced ornamentation began to spread around the turn of the 17th

—18th centuries among the population of the Great Hungarian Plain. In this period plainland furniture was made by joiners who did all the woodwork in churches, satisfied the orders of wealthy noblemen and burgesses as well as those of the peasant population of villages and country-towns. The furniture, made of hard or soft wood, was usually richly decorated with elaborate carvings and painted flower motifs. These painted flower matifs can be regarded as the continuation in the Hungarian Plain of lateRenaissance traditions of Transylvania. These mirrors with carved and painted frames remained in use as late as the 1930s in plainland homes, including Debrecen and its neighbourhood, much longer than other types of painted peasant furniture. Since these mirrors were not exposed to particularly hard wear, they were used by several generations of families. Originally they were imported to Hungary in simple hard-wood frames from various territories of Austria and Germany, and the beautifully carved, painted frames were made already by joiners in this country. Later, in the 20th century when grained furniture came into use, these mirrorframes were re-painted with dark-brown paint, to make them similar to the rest of the furniture. With various preservative methods it was possible to remove this second coat of paint and expose the original colours. The carving ornamentation of these pieces show that the workmanship of the joiners was of very high standard, very close to what we find in the very finely wrought church fittings. 379