It is perhaps rarely known that handicraft trade – including joinery industry – in Hungary was of world standards till World War I. Equipped with technical expertise gathered throughout the centuries and perfecting it, the workshops of Hungarian joiners made excellent products of first-class wood to be transported all over the Central European region. The existence of a coherent cultural unit is proven by the fact that we can see basically the same technical solutions in every part of historical Hungary ranging from Sopron to Brasov. The differences tend to be more obvious in windows of some isolated areas of the countryside. However, they do not typically result from structural characteristics: windows of the houses within a certain geographical district tend to reflect the traditions, forms and individual tastes of a master or joiner’s shop.
This publication is meant to draw attention to such regional features without aiming at perfection. In a previous publication of ours entitled Budapest in Detail, we have already devoted a short chapter to the history of windows actually focussing on examples found all over Budapest. After the publication of the book we arrived at the conclusion that the topic should be dealt with as an independent title, including examples covering the whole area of historical Hungary, as it can be interpreted as a unanimous unit from the viewpoint of architectural history. There is a wide range of antique windows surviving till now in some regions of Transsylvania, Upper Hungary and the South. Unfortunately, even these archaic areas suffer a serious loss of their relics nowadays. It is an ever-accelerating process we also experienced: there were windows we had seen in the three years spent on collecting data that could be included in this book but cannot be found any more as they have been removed from their original places since then.
We hope that this publication helps to promote the preservation of traditional windows as architectural values as well as to earn them the due respect they deserve.
This book is available with a joint (seperate) book of the English translation.
A kötethez most egy Gyakorlati útmutató című füzetet is adunk segítségül az ablakok megőrzése érdekében.