The Village World

Folk art makes little sense without the world that produced it. Embroidery, pottery, costume and festivals all grew out of a way of life organised around the farming year, the household and the village community. This chapter sketches that world: the house and yard, the cycle of work, the language of dress, the role of craftsmen, and the changes that began to dissolve it from the nineteenth century onwards. It is a general picture, and regions differed a great deal. Details are from general knowledge and flagged where they should be checked.

The House and the Yard

A traditional village house was built from local materials: timber, wattle and daub, adobe (sun-dried earth bricks) or stone, with a thatched or later tiled roof, depending on the region (check the regional variety). Common features, though not universal, were a narrow house set end-on to the street, a long porch along the yard side, and a layout of living room, kitchen and a "clean room" kept for guests and festivals (check).

• The clean room. A room for show, with the best bed piled high with embroidered pillows and cloths, painted furniture and decorated plates on the wall. It was in part a display of the household's skill and wealth.
• The yard. A working space with a well, outbuildings, animals and often a garden. Gates and fences could be carved.
• The village layout. Streets of long, narrow plots, with a church, an inn and a common pasture. The pattern differed between the nucleated villages of the plain and the scattered farms (tanya) of some regions (check).

Many examples of these houses can be seen rebuilt at the Open Air Museum in Szentendre (see Chapter 1), where the arrangement of rooms can be studied directly (check current displays).

The Farming Year

The year was set by the work. Ploughing and sowing in spring, haymaking and harvest in summer, grape picking and the slaughtering of pigs in autumn and winter, and indoor work such as spinning and embroidery in the long winter evenings. Many customs, such as blessing the harvest or marking the new wine, were tied to these tasks, a link followed up in Chapter 6.

Dress as a Language

In the traditional village, clothing told others who you were. Details of cut, colour, headdress and ornament could mark a person's age, marital status, wealth, religion, occasion and place of origin (check). Girls, brides, married women and widows would dress differently, and festive dress differed from everyday dress. Cloth and decoration were made largely at home, so a woman's skill was visible in what she and her family wore.

Craftsmen and Guilds

Not everything was made at home. Specialist craftsmen supplied what households could not make: potters, blacksmiths, cartwrights, furriers, leather workers and tailors. In towns, craftsmen were organised in guilds, which controlled training, standards and prices (check Hungarian guild history). Some villages and market towns became known for one craft, and travelling traders and fairs spread their goods. Chapter 4 looks at pottery, wood and other craft traditions in detail.

The World Begins to Change

The village world was never frozen. Several changes loosened it, and later ones nearly ended it (check the dates and the sequence).

• The end of serfdom (1848). The law of that year freed peasants from feudal obligations, altering their status and land ownership (check details).
• Railways and markets. Rail links brought factory cloth, cheap pottery and new fashions, and made it possible to sell goods far away.
• Education and migration. Schools, military service and movement to towns and abroad introduced new tastes and removed many young people from village life.
• The twentieth century. War, border changes, the collectivisation of farming in the communist period and later industrialisation all disrupted the old pattern (check).

As the working purpose of many objects faded, some survived as heirlooms, some as museum pieces, and some were taken up and adapted as symbols, a story that continues in Chapter 9.

Exercises