Mészáros Gyula: Szekszárd és környéke török díszítésű kerámia emlékei (Szekszárd, 1968)

CERAMIC RELICS WITH TURKISH-STYLE ORNAMENTATION FROM SZEKSZÁRD AND ITS ENVIRONMENT (Summary) The „Sárköz", a country famous for its national costume and handwoven tissues, is situated in County Tolna, on the marshy grounds along the river Danube, southeast from Szekszárd, extending as far as the confines of Báta, its western borders being the hills of Szekszárd. In this small area, made by Nature itself, on the sheltering mounds hardly elevated above the plains, Man kept living from the Neolitic Age on. During the Roman Period one of the main thoroughfares of Central Europe passed by there connecting Aquincum (now Buda), through Mursa (Osijek) with Italy and the Balkan Peninsula. In the course of the millenium of Hungarian history settlements were flourishing in this area. The Sárköz and its environment were early joined in the cultural and economical circulation of the country. Three abbeys were founded on its confines by Hungarian kings during the XI-XIIth centuries, which fact indicates an active intellectual life. Ceramic finds of great importance, both local and import wares, as well as a rich numismatical material from the period between the XVIth and XVIIth centuries were unearthed there. The Turkish occupation, which lasted from the second quarter of the XVIth century on for more than ijo years, depopulated the Sárköz, where the Hungarian peasants had to pay tributes to Constantinople, taxes to Vienna, and, as likely as not, rates to peremptory squires, too. The abandoned and desolate villages were occupied by the Turks, populated by artisans, merchants and mercenaries of South Slavic origin, who arrived with the Turks to the territory of our country, or infiltrated there during the Turkish occupation; in many cases the Hungarian settlements became deserted for good. We learn e.g. from Turkish and West European itineraries as well as from other written records that Szekszárd was populated about 1663 by Bosnians. A charter dated from 1669 tells us that the inhabitants of Mórágy, a village at the southwestern border of the Sárköz, were at this time Serbs, i.e. South Slavs. Turkish art - intermediated partly by South Slavic artisans - had a great influence on the patterns of Hungarian applied art and folk art, especially on the field of embroidery and popular ceramics. The Hungarian ceramic art, inspired at the same time also by Italian, Haban (i. c. Anabaptist) and barokk influences, was enriched in the first place by floral ormanents of Turkish origin: tulips, roses, carnations, pineapples and swastika-like flowers, called „whirling rose". Near to the right bank of the Hungarian Danube the remains of three ceramic workshops, respectively those of their artefacts were discovered; with their 4 Szekszárdi múzeum