About the collection
The Agriculture Collection was formed in 1960 as the result of efforts at systemisation begun in 1954. The museum acquired its first seven implements related to arable farming in 1885, though the majority of early additions were made in conjunction with the open-air ethnographical village created for the Millennial Celebrations in 1896. The 1,535 tools and farming implements purchased for the village by János Jankó, for example, included 138 items related specifically to arable farming.
This initial material was later expanded through the efforts of the enthusiastic collectors Ottó Herman and Zsigmond Bátky. During the first third of the 20th century, numerous additional items were collected by István Györffy, whose research focused specifically on the subject of farming on the Great Hungarian Plain. Inquiry into the subject of Hungarian settlements popular in the 1930's also played an important role in the acquisition of new material, with especial reference to the field work done by Károly Viski in Transylvania, Béla Gunda in Transdanubia, Galimdzsán Tagán in Northern-Hungary, and László K. Kovács in the region of the Great Hungarian Plain. After 1951, the collection benefitted from the research projects of national scope led by Lajos Takács and Marietta Boross, which dealt with the specialised areas of plough lands and home gardening.
Today, the collection comprises a total of 3,757 pieces, distributed proportionally among a number of themes. It includes examples of virtually every type of implement of significance to the subject of vine farming, though its geographical focus and variable quantities reflect the special interests of the professionals involved.
The collection boasts a particularly large number of items in several categories: 232 hoes and 103 hoe cleaning implements in the collection of hand tools for soil cultivation; 51 ploughs and 41 harrows in the category of implements pulled by animals; 204 reed cutting tools, 216 sickles, 36 scythes, and 147 whetstones under the heading of cutting implements; and in the category of grain processing tools, 62 flails, 149 wooden pitchforks, and 40 straw rakes. The collection also offers a variety of tools used in traditional viniculture, fruit production, corn growing, and tobacco farming.
Nearly all artefacts in the collection have been technically documented, analysed, and classified, with the latest guide book citing a total of 61 publications that have relied heavily on the museum's material.
The curator of the collection is György Máté.