Veres Gábor: A népi bútorzat története Északkelet-Magyarországon - Studia Agriensia 28. (Eger, 2008)

THE HISTORY OF FOLK FURNITURE IN NORTHEASTERN HUNGARY

albeit not in all regions. In some Heves villages interior furnishings included curtain-holders which were made by local specialists and craftsmen. To find such objects in peasant houses, which originally had no curtains at all, and only latterly had curtains held up by twine or rods, suggests it was an object that came from an urban milieu. The makers would invariably paint them and, in the case of those at Gyöngyöspata for example, emphasise the central section by adding picture frames. Stylistic changes also manifested themselves in other ways. In some areas, as in the case of several villages in the southern part of Heves County what were normally white walls were painted in other colours. In most cases it was the oven that was painted, a simple blue in Adács and in rich patterns incorporating human figures in Boldog.

Thanks to the dated pieces and sources we have it is possible to date the changes going on in furniture down to the nearest decade in most of the areas covered in this study. Apart from showing that the spread of painted furniture in northeastern Hungary varied according to the ethnographic group and region, the evolution of local styles can be traced. It is these features, and their geographical and chronological extent, that this study has been able to examine with the help of considerable source material and numerous examples coming courtesy of a number of private and local collections, and museums beyond the frontiers of present-day Hungary, many of them unlikely to be familiar to readers. It has made for a more detailed and nuanced account.

There were styles and associated centres of production that emerged in the period in question that were to have an effect on a substantial part of northeastern Hungary. The one-time county of Gömör-Kishont was one such place, whose influence in the field of incised wooden furniture has had the longest-lasting effect. Written sources, as well as the objects themselves, tell us that dismantled cupboards and wooden flour-bins arrived from the hilly wooded landscape of Gömör to the markets of Miskolc, Eger and Gyöngyös by the wagonful as part of the traditional exchange of commodities that went on between the two regions. Although the Gömör incised chest could be found in dwellings all over northeastern Hungary, its popularity was to decrease more rapidly in some areas than others. In an effort to supply what was a huge market for incised chests from the beginning of the nineteenth century, a number of specialists in the villages of the hillier parts of northeastern Hungary started to make the furniture themselves. Despite their undeniable debt to Gömör, local traits can nevertheless be detected in such objects. In this respect particular mention should be made of the villages of

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