About the collection
When museum experts organise a body of artefacts into official collections, categories are defined based on the materials of which they are fashioned and the functions they serve. The Nutrition Collection may be seen as an odd assemblage of the leftovers of this process, since it comprises food processing, serving, conservation, and storage items made of materials not included in any other collection.
It thus contains no ceramics or textiles, since artefacts made of these materials have each been placed in a separate collection. At the same time, because it is often difficult to delineate between various groups of objects on the basis of functionality, many items clearly related to food and diet have also been placed in other collections. What can be said of the artefacts in the collection is that they are all related to the traditional nutritional culture of the various religious, ethnic, and social groups living in Hungarian-speaking territories. The backbone of the collection is formed of objects related to archaic cooking processes. Thus, one finds not only the usual utensils of cooking and baking here, but also implements used around the fire, including a very special clockwork-driven spit-turning apparatus. Among groups of objects organised by function, the foremost are those of food preparation, storage, and consumption. In terms of materials, the collection includes objects made of metal or wood, from simple wooden implements, to caps, plates, and other table setting items made of tin, indicating the presence of a developed metallurgical industry.
The curator of the collection is Dr. Zsuzsa Szarvas.