Postai és Távközlési Múzeumi Alapítvány Évkönyve, 2001

Tartalmi összefoglaló angol nyelven

items in our uniform and textile collection. The coat and hat we have described cannot have been made before 1838 or after 1874.

Júlia Kisfaludi: Collection of Uniforms and Textiles

The system by which this collection is inventoried was introduced in 1984. At that time all artefacts of postal history were recorded in an inventory list. In 1987, the uniforms, accessories, banners, and other textile artefacts were separated from the overall collection, though the original inventory numbers were retained. Since then they have been managed as a separate collection, with its own inventory list.

An acquisitions registry, begun in 1931 and listing all new items, is now a part of the Postal Museum Archive. This registry was maintained until 1982, and while it contains repeated notations on uniforms, accessories, and banners as they newly entered the collection, no additional information was recorded to assist us in identifying them. We did learn, however, that in 1931 the museum received a series of uniforms, shoes and headgear from the Central Materiel Storehouse, just as it received a second set of these items from the Material Supply Company in 1955. We believe that these were uniforms actually worn at the time. In 1931 a “sample of a crude fabric used for messengers” and in 1942 a “sample of fabric used for postal messenger jackets ” was donated to the collection from the Central Materiel Warehouse and the Royal Hungarian Post Office Headquarters. The acquisitions registry contains a note that in August 1945 and January 1946 the Transport Museum transferred several artefacts to the Postal Museum, including uniforms and banners.

However, we only have been able to keep track of the actual process through which the uniform and textile collection grew since 1984. Most of the collection is made up of complete uniforms, though there are some individual components and accessories.

The government employees and officials working for the post office had been required to wear a particular dress, specified by decree, beginning with the early 19th century. The cut and colouring of the uniform, the adornments, and the postal symbols on them had a national character. The uniforms included armbands to distinguish people working in different places and jobs. These bands were made according to a standard regulated by decree, just like the garments. The one exception was a set of armbands which post office workers made by themselves and inscribed with Cyrillic lettering in the latter part of World War II, to prevent conscription.

Post office bags used for transporting bundles of letters, small sacks used for the separate collection of coin, and larger sacks with ringed closures used to transport bank notes, were essential tools of postal operations.

A set of horse blankets is an unusual part of the collection. Postal deliveries in Budapest by horse-drawn carriage, and the operation of a related Postal Station which was opened in 1919 were terminated in December 1958. Woven into the fabric of the woollen horse blankets were a postal horn, insignia of the post office, and the initials of the Hungarian Royal Post Office (MKP). We know nothing of the people who made them.

Treasury and postal employees established several social organisations in the late 19th century. These associations grouped professions and people with similar circles of interest. Most had their own banners, sewn and embroidered by association members or their families.

201