A gyűjtemény leírása
The Collection of Customs and Toys, currently numbering more than 8000 pieces, was founded in 1947 at the time the newly independent Museum of Ethnography organised its holdings into various thematic areas. It involves two large groups of artefacts: children's toys (more than 2700 pieces) and objects related to various folk customs (more than 2000 pieces), the latter of which includes a special collection of painted Easter eggs (more than 3300 pieces).
Acquisition of material for the collection commenced in the late 19th century, and with the exception of a small number objects dating to the 18th century, the artefacts it comprises were all produced since the mid 1800's.
The collection offers examples of both individual toys and equipment used for games. Quite a few of the toys were of the type which develop dexterity: bats, balls, spinning tops, marbles, game sticks, and yo-yos. Most, however, were miniature versions of objects taken from the adult world: tools, vehicles, objects of everyday use, articles of clothing, musical instruments, and weapons. Many served to prepare children for a later life of work. Figures of animals and humans form a special group within the collection. Consisting primarily of dolls, a number of these are dressed in folk costume, while some were never actually used in play, but served rather as decorative items or souvenirs. Also related to the lives of children are implements of learning (slates, slate pencils, inkwells, books, exercise books, blackboards, and school satchels), which form a separate unit within the collection. Most of the toys are home made with natural materials, such as wood, vegetable materials, textiles, leather, bone, and stone, and from metal. The collection also includes a number of toys, some made of plastic, produced in the past few decades by factories or co-operatives.
Objects for daily use are subdivided into two major groups: objects related to the turning points of human life and calendar holidays or special days. To the former belong christening presents, coats of arms worn by eligible bachelors, props used by young men designated to wine and dine the musicians at Carnival festivities, trees of life used at wedding celebrations, engagement presents, dowry letters, sticks carried by best men at weddings, sweet breads, cakes and pastries served at wedding dinners, flags, forks, lanterns carried by young men when they asked for the hand of a girl in marriage, gift items, masks, and various objects used during funerals and times of mourning, such as grave stones, crosses, coffins, carved wooden poles used to bear coffins and temporarily mark graves, coffin nails, a type of bier known as the "St. Michael's horse," grave-digging shovels, funeral lanterns, scarves that were tied to carved wooden grave markers, and funeral wreaths and flags.
Of the several bodies of material dealing with customs related to the calendar year, the most substantial pertains to winter holidays. Included in this category are nativity scenes, mangers, and puppet theatres used for traditional nativity plays and processions; clothes worn by masked revellers on Luca's Day (pronounced "Lootza's Day,") the 13th of December, when people began preparing a magical wooden chair which will enable one to see witches at Christmas-time; bagpipes, swords, and sticks with chains used for Christmas minstrelsy (similar to carolling); stars used in the traditional dramatisation of the Journey of the Three Magi; whips used during the celebration of Childermas (or the Feast of the Holy Innocents); drums, cowbells, lashes, and sticks with chains used for greetings; special masks, knives, and whips. The collection also offers a number of Christmas tree ornaments, Christmas candles, Christmas trees, and pieces used to adorn the Christmas table (human and animal figures and nativity scenes).
Also in the collection are a number of objects associated with the Carnival festivities of the town of Mohács where people dress in special animal skins and masks, including artefacts used during the part of Carnival set aside especially for women.
Customs observed in the springtime are represented by a variety of items, including painted Easter eggs, tools for creating Easter egg designs, Easter apples, Easter lambs, the hoses used by young unmarried men to slosh girls with water (for which they might receive an Easter egg), the whips occasionally used in place of hoses as a variation on the same custom, the straw kisze figures representing winter that were burned for spring.
The museum's collection of painted Easter eggs and related artefacts, prodigious in size even by European standards, represents the most complete body of material within the collection. Assembled over the past one hundred years, these items provide a clear illustration of the range of techniques used in egg painting, the rich array of patterns involved, geographical aspects of the custom, and the role of the Easter egg in Easter tradition.
The curator of the collection is Hannah Daisy Foster.