Nyúzó Gáspár Pottery Country House

Known as a pottery house in Tiszafüred, this museum is a traditional farmhouse in the oldest area of the city, which was declared as a folk monument in 1975. After a complete renovation, the living conditions and workshop of the former potter masters, Gáspár Nyúzó (1839-1910) and his son, Gáspár Nyúzó (1864-1922) were exhibited in 1980.

The house was built in the first half of the 19th century by the father of Gábor Nyúzó’s wife, Julianna Kiss. The couple’s only child, following his father, Gáspár Nyúzó, also became a potter, but at the end of the 1910s, he had abandoned his craft. In 1919, her daughter, Ilona Nyúzó, married Pál Millinghoffer, a belt manufacturer, who soon took over his father’s workshop.

This couple lived in the building until its sale in 1975. You can enter the traditional three-storey house from the arcade surrounded by double columns. The walls of the house were built of large adobe bricks that are common in the area. The doubled pillars are made of wood and covered with limed mud. The pillars on the pedestal, decorated with column heads, give the building a unique, classicistic effect.

Father and son working together

Entering the porch, we first arrive in the kitchen and then the ‘atrium’ from where the visitor can enter in two other small rooms: the courtroom and the clean room. The courtroom was also used as a workshop and a bedroom.

From here another small room is opened where the finished pottery products were stored. This part of the building was demolished in the 1950s. The street room was the “clean room”, where the family’s most valuable furniture, costumes, textiles, and artefacts were housed. This living room was heated by a large oven from the kitchen. At that time, the most important place in the household was the kitchen, where the tools for baking and cooking are still in their original place as if the housekeeper had just left to feed the chickens.

The house once had a larger plot, where the different economic outbuildings, stalls, stables were built and in a small separate building, the kiln was used to fire pottery. Usually seven times a year was the kiln used, which required a lot of wood. Occasionally, up to 500-600 pottery could fit in the kiln, depending on the size of the items. The bisque firing – the first firing – and the second glazed firing required a lot of expertise and experience.

The Nyúzó family’s typical Tiszafüred-style plates, stalls, bottles, mugs, jugs, silks and butelles can be seen in the Country House and in the “Masters and Masterpieces” exhibition of the Pál Kiss Museum.