Craftsmen: their organizations and products (16-19. c.) Research in archives, analysis and edition of unpublished data.

From the 16th till the 19th century the price of craftsmen’s products was set by a landlord, a town or county or by the state. From the beginning of the 19th century some of these handwritten tariffs (so called limitatio) were published and used as a source for the research on the history of handicrafts, but general collection and systematic publication started only in the mid 20th century.
Our project is to collect the unpublished tariffs from the archives and publish them. We categorise the tariffs by handicrafts and by the time of their declaration. This categorised information can be used in other research like the change of products’ basic materials, technology and the terminology etc. Unfortunatly a meaningful translation of the old Hungarian words and phrases is not possible to foreign languages.
Since 1995 we published 7 volumes of tariffs for clothes, wooden works, ceramic, glass and wooden dishes, which had been used in housekeeping and farming.
We have started the editing of the yet unpublished collection of legal privileges of craftmen between 1525-1683 from the Libri Regii of the Hungarian National Archives.
In the next four years we will publish in four volumes the tariffs for the following handicrafts: smiths, blacksmiths, locksmiths, cartwrights, wheel-wrights, strap, rope and saddle makers. These handicrafts produced most of the required tools and devices for industrial production and transportation.
We plan to add the tariffs of small handicrafts, which did not fit into the previously published branches. We also plan to publish a volume with explanations of the technology and terminology from this period.
We will finish the publication of the collection of legal privileges of craftsmen (1683-1740) from the Libri Regii of the Hungarian National Archives.  

Mária Flórián
Institute of Ethnology , Hungarian Academy of Sciences