Showing posts with label Hungarian Embroidery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hungarian Embroidery. Show all posts

Saturday, March 23, 2024

TARD VILLAGE : THE EPICENTER OF TRADITIONAL MATYO EMBRODERIE

This article is about the economic conditions in Borson-Abauj-Zemplen County in Hungary and the way women, especially elder women, are turning to their traditional artistry to improve their incomes.

RADIO FREE EUROPE : TARD VILLAGE MATYO EMBRODERIE

Excerpts: The practice of Matyo embroidery is through to have started around 200 years ago and has since been passed down through the generations.  The women living in Tard mastered their skills, embroidering the distinctive flowers and leaves, by watching their mothers, who had learned it from their own mothers.

According to local mythology, the technique was born when the devil kidnapped a man and asked for the most colorful flowers as a ransom.  In the dead of winter, in order to get her husband back, his young bride presented the devil with a set of richly embroidered flowers.

According to local mythology, the technique was born when the devil kidnapped a man and asked for the most colorful flowers as a ransom. In the dead of winter, in order to get her husband back, his young bride presented the devil with a set of richly embroidered flowers.

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Like many towns and villages in Hungary's northeast, Tard has been in decline since the wider regional collapse of heavy industry and mining after the fall of communism.  Across Hungary, some 1.9 million people -- 12 percent of the population - now live in poverty.  According to 2019 statistics, 15 percent of people over the age of 65 lived in deprivation.


Saturday, June 25, 2022

TRADITIONAL MAGYAR /HUNGARIAN FOLK MOTIFS - INTERESTING and FUN


I hope this is free of commercials... it gets interesting about midway, after the humor.  It is part of a series and worth listening to... It may inspire you to embroider...  I'm impressed!

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

HUNGARIAN CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS : EMBROIDERY and CRAFTS

The other day I was shopping for HUNGARIAN or HUNGARIAN INSPIRED Christmas ornaments - decorations for the tree, the "Christmas Tree" that is a tradition that came from the Northern European countries and from Pagan tree worship but which is popular in most European countries as it is in the United States. 

I found  many selections on line that are in the category of patriotic flags, flag colors, and Hungarian sayings.

I wanted something more traditional, and I think that means Hungarian embroidery; hearts, roosters, cats, boots, angels, and pigs, owls, even dogs - devil dogs, all embroidered colorfully on cut out shapes made of felt. I understand that a slang term for this type of ornament is MATYOS after the ethnic people, you could say a sub-group of Hungarians, who perhaps most excelled in the art and lived mostly in the Abauj-Torno- Zemplen counties which are today up against Slovakia. (You see this embroidery on folk costumes (clothes) too.)

Although I'm not too experienced with embroidery, I was introduced to it as a child and believe that I could make one or two ornaments of felt in the same spirit.