The Ethnographic Collection of the Jász Museum
Among the collections of the Jász Museum, the ethnographic collection is the richest and most distinguished. Part of this continuously expanding material—built up over 151 years—can be seen in the permanent exhibition, while the rest is kept in the visible storage and on the shelves of the museum’s other storerooms. Outstanding pieces include the museum’s beekeeping-related holdings (a wooden beehive-log from Jászapáti dated to 1770, as well as straw- and bulrush-woven hives), the finely carved shepherd objects by Miklós Nagypál, an early 18th-century hand mill (locally known as a “lélekszárító” or “jajmalom”), and a large, central-screw wine press from 1875, popularly called a “sutú.”
A substantial part of the collection documents former waterside life, both extensive and stall-based animal husbandry, arable farming, grain processing, and the tools of the peasant household. These include richly carved implements for hemp processing, woven containers for storing produce and eggs, and a highly varied ceramic assemblage. The material culture of religious life is represented by devotional prints—several produced in printing houses operating in settlements of the Jászság—along with sculptures of former religious confraternities (Saint Florian and Saint Wendelin), 18th-century “peasant Madonnas” and pietàs, and a Holy Land icon and triptych linked to Greek merchants. Within the ethnographic collection, the toy collection is of special significance (with the earliest items dating back to the 1910s and major growth during the toy exhibitions of 1988 and 2019), as are the costume and textile holdings (women’s and men’s garments, richly embroidered household textiles, and contemporary Jász-pattern embroideries made by local craftswomen). Also noteworthy are storage furnishings such as carved and painted “tulip” chests, commodes, standing cupboards and wardrobes. The highlight of the furniture collection is a set of painted room furniture from Jászapáti, collected by János Jankó and shown at the 1896 Millennium National Ethnographic Exhibition. The tool assemblages of traditional crafts—especially furriers, bootmakers and blacksmiths—are likewise substantial, as is the school-history material (documents and objects) that entered the museum with the closure of the region’s rural schools.
