Szék-Style Doll’s Room

Author: Tamás Molnár
Photoes: Edit Garai

In Szék (Sic, Romania), a village in the Transylvanian region of Mezőség, the three-room peasant house emerged as the local architectural norm in the 18th and 19th centuries. The front, or streetside, room would gradually come to be used as a a representative space, often referred to as the ‘clean room’—or in local parlance:  the széki szoba (‘Szék-ian room’).

The first description of a széki szoba appeared in the volume A Monograph on Szolnok-Doboka County, published in 1903: ‘the crown jewel of the whitewashed room was its bed, piled high with various embroidered pillows; before it, a painted bench supporting a document holder or small letter box; under that, a chest of clothing; across from it all, a long, lidded bench; near the door, a bed for actual use, a wooden settee, and a table. Opposite the door were dish racks, porcelain vessels, and plates, a single spoon in front of each.’

In Szék, decorative furnishings were painted in two different styles that—oral sources reveal—follow an order mandated by local tradition. The dish cupboards, great bed, tall-backed bench, and longer lidded bench were all painted in red and white flowers with green leaves (the Hungarian national colours) over a black background. All other furniture—i.e. the chest, shorter lidded bench, table, and chairs were painted in marbled red-and-black.

The bedclothes and other textiles in the room could be made by virtually any village woman, as each girl acquired full mastery of the necessary crafts while weaving and embroidering her trousseau. The bed’s lowermost layer, which extended from the surface of the frame to the top of the headboard, consisted of multiple rows of sacks stuffed with hay or straw.  The two outermost of these, the only ones that were visible, were covered in red-and-white cotton pillowcases (derékaljvég). Atop these was laid a white, decorative sheet (kötéses lepedő), itself covered with three layers of woollen textiles woven in various patterns. The uppermost layer of textiles was the one that made the strongest statement:  three rows of decorative pillows, often consisting of two parts each.  The embroidered part (called the csúp) was made of thicker homespun cloth, to which the second part, made of thinner store-bought cloth, was sewn. Thus piled to the ceiling, the fully made bed was the centrepiece of the entire room.

The doll’s room seen here—essentially a Szék-ian room in miniature—embodies the memories of Szék villagers who moved away from their home and, no longer able or willing to furnish a ‘clean room,’ brought elements of their former life into their new homes in this way. Doll’s rooms could also be given as gift items, like the other artefacts on display here. This particular model was given to Kolozsvár natives Judit Varga and András Maxim in 1982, a wedding present from a Szék-born servant of Varga’s parents. Unfortunately, no record was made of the giver’s identity, the inventory entry for the model listing its maker as ‘Sándor Nagy and his wife, Sári’. The set consists of the following items:  a bed, a bench, a lidded bench, a table, a dish rack, a straw sack, a duvet, a decorative sheet, three woven bed coverings, nine decorative pillows, three tablecloths, four pitchers, and four plates. The ceramics are the only items within the set that were not made in Szék, but in Korond (Corund, Romania).  

Doll’s rooms arranged with painted furniture are not unique to Szék: wherever painted furniture was the norm, miniatures were made as decorative items, toys, or carpenters’ models. The collections of the Museum of Ethnography preserve similar artefacts from a range of locations, including Sepsiszentgyörgy (Sfântu Gheorghe, Romania), Kalotaszeg (Țara Călatei, Romania), Mezőkövesd, and Sárköz.