The Holló family of furniture makers

The foundations of painted furniture making in Jászdózsa were established by Mihály Holló and his wife Katalin Nagy in the early 1920s. Mihály Holló graduated from the Hungarian College of Fine Arts in 1919 and Katalin Nagy from the National Royal Hungarian School of Applied Arts in 1926. From the very beginning they produced objects, furniture and souvenir items with a folk theme. They worked in Gödöllő, then in Budapest, and from the 1930s in Jászárokszállás then from 1968 in their present workshop in Jászdózsa. The workshop has been run by László Holló since 1968, assisted by his daughter Anna Holló, who graduated from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2004.

From the very start, the family has been working on reviving the Hungarian folk culture and the folk furniture painting traditions. Hundreds of people have been involved in this work in the Jászság region over the past ninety years: many craftsmen, cabinetmakers, blacksmiths and decorative painters worked in the Holló Workshop until their retirement. In addition to the small sized but numerous souvenir items, there was a continuous production of painted and carved furniture, and unique carvings, which won several prizes at domestic and foreign exhibitions (Barcelona World Expo 1929, trade fairs, Folk Art Studio, Museum of Ethnography, Metropolitan House of Culture in Budapest, Museum of Applied Folk Arts, Siófok House of Culture, Kunsthalle, Vigadó, exhibitions and fairs in Munich, Stockholm, Hamburg, Cologne, Darmstadt, Lille, Dijon). Since 1987 they have been presenting their works in the workshop gallery on Vitkovics Mihály Street in Budapest, drawing inspiration from the formal and decorative arts of the Carpathian Basin.