Istvánovits Eszter (szerk.): A nyíregyházi Jósa András Múzeum Évkönyve 55. (Nyíregyháza, 2013)
Néprajz - Emődi János: A margittai kerámia XVII-XVIII. századi előzményei
Emődi János exception of four vessels the photographs of which were published by Terézia Mózes and described by Emőke P. Szalay. A volume in print represents the local pottery, the craftsmen by names and their guild and includes around 50 photographs of vessels made in Marghita. However, these are 20th century products, only three large jugs are older, but they all come from the 19th century. So, it seemed reasonable to seek for the earlier traces of the local pottery with the methods of archaeology, and, if possible, to excavate a find assemblage similar to the Tileagd one. As a matter of fact, we would have liked to find an 18th—19th century archaeological ceramic material like in Tileagd, but in both cases 17th century finds came to light. In the course of research our starting point was an empirical fact: following each firing in a kiln, the potter discarded one or two dozens of poorly baked, deformed or injured vessels, and prepared a special pit in the faraway corner of his yard, where he collected the discarded pieces and covered them with earth in order to prevent accumulation of waste in his yard and garden. Both in Tileagd and Marghita such a waste-pit was found, in the latter place together with the burned bottom surface of the kiln (3 m large in diameter) with some shards on it. In the waste-pit we found mostly fragments of small and medium sized pots and milk jars, but in a smaller number also fragments of craft-bowls, duck baking pans, saucepans, jugs with wide rim, jugs with strainer, jugs decorated with knobs, bowls, beakers and lids. In most cases the colour of the vessels before the first firing was drab, light brown. There were only few pieces discarded after the second firing. Only the interior of these pieces was glazed - sometimes brown, more rarely green, and in some cases the rim was also glazed. Almost all the vessels were decorated. The ornament could be a simple scratched line or wavy line. The most frequent decorative motifs were reddish brown made with iron oxide. The latter included bunches of parallel lines placed in the shape of horizontal registers, with white earthpaint braided pattern between them, more rarely with white stripes. Other wavy, horizontal or vertical bands were also white. Strap handles of the vessels mostly were vertically fluted. Few, but somewhat similar analogies of the represented pottery, and some ceramic fragments from the Ottoman period (in Bihor this 32 years long period came to end in 1693), a tin glazed Habán (Hutterite) vessel fragment and a fragmented pipe imitating a Turkish type date the Marghita finds to the late-17th century. Vessels coming from the kiln found in Marghita represent ceramics of uniform shape and decoration. The activity of this centre can be described as the early example of the regionalisation of Hungarian pottery workshops. János Emődi RO-410210 Oradea str. Episcop M. Pavel nr. 4 ap. 5 e-mail: aemodi@gmail.com 260
