Imre Romsics
A guardian of Kalocsa Embroidery
MúzeumCafé 6.
Kalocsa embroidery has become internationally famous as the decoration of peasant costumes, yet there is much misunderstanding about it – for example, that the folk artists are from the town of Kalocsa only in spirit. Imre Romsics, director of the Viski Károly Museum in Kalocsa provides some clarification. Kalocsa folk costume is kitschy – this was still being stressed at Budapest University’s Arts Faculty up to 1989. That superficial view drove Imre Romsics to pursue a degree of ethnography, though he was already a qualified teacher of geography. He began researching the folk art of the Kalocsa area, where a few hundred elderly people still wear embroidered costumes, from its social and geographical aspects. A generation of grandmothers still knows by heart who embroidered their costumes and when each one was worn. In the early 20th century the daughter of a well-o≠ family may have received 99 costumes as dowry. Chronology is helped by the embroidery patterns, which reveal the age and social status of its wearer, moreover the festive occasion when it was worn. A Kalocsa person ‘in the know’ can detect from individual decoration who pre-drew and embroidered the amazing roses, tulips and cornflowers.
Kalocsa embroidery is not a Hungarian invention – it is rooted in all-European fashion. The embroidery simultaneously appeared with similar Indian and Greek palm leaf motifs all over the continent . “Such patterns can be found in the fashion magazines of Munich and Paris from the 1820s,” says Romsics . First, well-to-do women took to having their attires embroidered in the villages. Later embroidery also became fashionable among peasants. Patterns seen on the costumes of townsfolk were first copied, then later further developed by women who had gained the skill with wall-painting. Everyone could do needlework in a village, but pre-drawing the patterns required a rare skill and imagination. Therefore, from far away places attires began to be taken to prominent folk artists. Those artists constituted the first generation of ‘drawing’ women and if the folk art of Kalocsa had developed evenly the sixth generation would be working now.
However, external influences have always had their e≠ect. The permanent exhibition of the Viski Károly Museum follows this history. The section about 19th-century local, cultural and folk art history presents patterns sewn exclusively in white cotton on costumes. The first designs were made in Ferenc Szeidler’s print workshop, then embroidery patterns began to be copied by hand and later varied in place of the expensive prints. The second generation embroidered costumes with black, red and blue thread, and also introduced ‘filled in’ needlework. Women pulled in the holes surrounded by embroidery and made them appear like drops of water.
The third generation used six colours and the next, when the increasingly complicated patterns were embroidered with Singer sewing machines, employed a di≠erent colour for each flower – in total thirty.