Kecskés Péter (szerk.): Ház és ember, A Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum Közleményei 4. (Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 1987)

Tanulmányok - H. CSUKÁS GYÖRGYI: Asztalosok Szentkirályszabadján

Györgyi H. Csukás JOINERS IN SZENTKIRÁLYSZABADJA Szentkirályszabadja is a Hungarian village not far from the county town of Veszprém. Its inhabitants claim that their ancestors received their privileges of nobility from King Stephen I (1000—1038). When the Turkish occupational forces were driven out after more than a century the population of the village began to grow. Through marriage or by purchasing a nobleman's real property several persons descending from serfs managed to get into the ranks of the nobility. As the large but very poor fields belonging to the village could not support its increasing population, many people took up some home craft. We have data showing the existence of a local cartwrights' guild in 1768. Joiners belonged to the Veszprém joiners' guild. The earliest records concerning Szentkirályszabadja joiners are in the registers of births, marriages and deaths of the Calvinist Church and in the minutes of the Veszprém joiners' guild and date from the end of the 18th century. The first Szentkirályszabadja joiners learned their trade in Veszprém but from the second third of the 19th century they could, in turn, take the local boys for apprentices. In the 1840s and 1850s the number of joiners steeply increased. In 1856 the members of the Veszprém parent guild who operated in Szentkirályszabadja established an independent joiners' society whose minutes remains. In those times joiners did not only satisfy local demand but also supplied quite distant regions with their wares. Regrettably there is scarcely any pieces of furniture from the early period whose Szentkirályszabadja origin could be established beyond doubt. In the last third of the 19th century local joiners made double-door wardrobes first of all which could be taken apart in late biedermeier and neo-rococo styles. These were taken by horse-drawn waggons to fairs near and far. In this period wardrobes were no longer only present in the homes of burghers and petty nobles but became widely distributed in peasant houses, too. There still are elderly joiners in Szentkirályszabadja who are the descendants of old joiner dynasties and can supply valuable information about the activities of their forebears. It is on basis of their narratives that the author outlines the activities of Szentkirályszabadja joiners around the turn of the century. Most of them farmed a small plough-land besides pursuing his trade or went sharecropping in the summer. They worked in one of the rooms, sometimes in the pantry of their house, many of them only when there was no agricultural work to be done. They only made a few kinds of furniture, some of them only double-door knock-down wardrobes, tohers also a lesser number of beds and tables. A smaller group of joiners lived exclusively off their trade, had a separate workshop, some even worked with one or two journeymen. They prepared pieces of furniture to order or for wholesalers and were also able to meet special requirements. Szentkirályszabadja joiners worked with hardwood. They made their polished pieces in a nationally accepted bourgeois taste adapted however to the local fashion of the particular place where the next fair was to be held. A joiner could make two wardrobes or a pair of beds in a week. They went to a fair every two or three weeks. Two or three of them hired a horse-drawn waggon to carry their products. Szentkirályszabadja furniture sold well in quite a large territory from Győr and Csorna through Mezőföld up to Simontornya as hardwood furniture was much higher thought of than locally made painted and flogged pinewood pieces.