Veres Gábor: A népi bútorzat története Északkelet-Magyarországon - Studia Agriensia 28. (Eger, 2008)
THE HISTORY OF FOLK FURNITURE IN NORTHEASTERN HUNGARY
ket can be found together with homemade pieces and furniture bought from specialists. Painted furniture became widespread during the nineteenth century, only to be replaced in the century’s final decades by monochrome furniture made by cabinet makers, and factory-made furniture. The features that were characteristic of northeastern Hungary have been explored with the aid of numerous new sources. The changes in folk furniture in the domestic culture of northeastern Hungary was by no means uniform either geographically or chronologically. Bridal chests, for example, continued to be used due to the important role they playing in the wedding celebrations. Their emotional importance also meant people were reluctant to part with them. For their children’s trousseaux, however, they assembed items in the latest style. Chests relying on incised rather than painted decoration retained their popularity much longer among the Palóc communities than was the case elsewhere, something explained partly by a preference for decoration of that kind on domestic furniture in Nógrád County as a whole. The study traces the characteristic features of Palóc furniture over several periods, showing that the Palóc population was more conservative and more eager to preserve their traditions. At the end of the nineteenth century chests could be made more marketable through the addition of plant and floral motifs found on other furniture and the application of red stain. At the beginning of the 20th century, however, the fashion for painted furniture was on the wane as new types of furniture started to appear. Chests began to be replaced by commodes containing drawers and standing on legs. Under the influence of bourgeois urban fashions such furniture was of one colour only, most frequently brown or black, rejecting the bright colours of before. The Palóc population, however, started painting their chests of drawers. Several examples from the Mátra region are included in the study. The prestige items tended also to be the most beautiful pieces of folk furniture, whose importance was heightened by the place they occupied in the traditions surrounding courtship and marriage. As these tended to be made by trained craftsmen, the changes in decorative style and furniture types can be traced relatively easily. The first piece of prestige furniture was the chest, which would variously be drawn up alongside the bed, the bench, the table and the chairs according to the season, although the preferred options would also change from place to place. There are great variations, however, in the numbers of trousseaux found in our region. During the nineteenth century furniture 182
