Cseri Miklós, Füzes Endre (szerk.): Ház és ember, A Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum évkönyve 9. (Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 1994)

SABJÁN TIBOR: Takaréktűzhelyek bontási tapasztalatai

EXPERIENCES IN DISMANTLING KITCHEN RANGES In the third part of his series of studies the author presents his experiences gained in the course of taking apart cooking ranges. The five descriptions published here give an insight into the constructional and structural versions of cooking devices used in different points of Hungary and representing different stages of development. Summing up what have been learned from these dismantling operations it can be stated that in Hungary constructed kitchen ranges (portable ones made of iron are not discussed here) are made of adobe or burnt bricks with mud and chaff used for mortar. Once the range was erected, its outside was muddied up, then whitewashed. It also happened that parts of a kitchen range were covered with tiles from a disused tile stove. (For the detailed description of such a specimen see: Sabján Tibor, 1989. pp 134-140). Cooking ranges were most often built in the room or the kitchen of the peasant house, either along or perpendicularly to a wall. A few specimens were placed in a corner (111. 16). Exceptions could only be found in Northern Hungary where some cooking ranges stood independently or were combined with other heating devices. The most important principle was that the elevated oven had always to be in touch with the wall as the smoke left through it. Traditionally the smoke from the kitchen range was directed through a channel hewn out of the wall, more recently through a tin tube, to the closed flue or, in case of an open chimney, above the head of people. In the latter case it also occurred that an adobe- or brick-walled flue in a corner draw the smoke even higher. In chimneyless, „smoky kitchens" sometimes there was not even the flue or the tin tube. The average kitchen range in Hungary consisted of a cooking part of about 70 to 80 cm in height and the oven which rose higher. The base of the range was often set back so that one could stand comfortably in front of it. Frequently the base formed a fairly big hole for keeping and drying wood. It also occurred that the cooking range was constructed on legs. Its most important metal parts were: (1) the cooking plate comprising a cast iron frame, cast iron plates placed into the frame and, in the middle of each plate, a hole covered with rings decreasing in size; (2) a stoking door of cast iron or tin plate; (3) a tin plate ash-bin door; (4) the aggregate of an oven door made of tin plate and a prismatic baking drum („sütődob"); (5) a cast iron grate. Cooking ranges of a more advanced type also had governor valves, cleaning doors, round water heaters, and grids for drying dishes. Cooking ranges were used for cooking, baking, (warming up meals), and heating. Potters and merchants also dealing in metalware prepared and sold special pots and pans for use on kitchen ranges. As coal was too expensive, villagers usually burnt wood and agricultural waste materials (corn-stalks and - cobs, dry vine-shoots, twigs, etc.) in the range. Cooking ranges became widely used in peasant houses in the second half of the 19th century although some early data appeared in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The ones discussed here were made on the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and between the two World Wars.