The pottery Modra is known for did not begin here. The Anabaptists — a radical Protestant movement whose members refused to baptise infants and were hunted across central Europe for it — fled into western Hungary in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and were known here as the Habans. They lived in closed communal yards and they were superb craftsmen; their speciality was faience, earthenware under a white tin glaze, painted before firing. The technique survived in the villages of this region long after the communities themselves had been broken up and absorbed — long enough for Modra, two hundred years later, to build a trade on it.Keramika, ktorou je Modra známa, sa nezrodila tu. Novokrstenci — radikálne protestantské hnutie, ktorého členovia odmietali krstiť nemluvňatá a v celej strednej Európe ich za to prenasledovali — utekali v 16. a 17. storočí do západného Uhorska a hovorilo sa im tu habáni. Žili v uzavretých spoločných dvoroch a boli vynikajúci remeselníci; ich špecialitou bola fajansa, hlinený riad pod bielou cínovou glazúrou, pomaľovaný ešte pred vypálením. Technika sa v dedinách tohto kraja udržala dlho po tom, čo samotné komunity rozbili a rozpustili — dosť dlho na to, aby na nej Modra o dvesto rokov neskôr postavila remeslo.
