Horváth Attila – Solymos Ede szerk.: Cumania 2. Ethnographia (Bács-Kiskun Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei, Kecskemét, 1974)
J. Vorák: Kolompár Kálmánné kiskunhalasi cigányasszony kézimunkái
,,This inclination to forming („Formwille") expressed in the clothing of the people Hanika analyses in a way novel and fundamental in this field: In his opinion identical forming forces act within a people, a race or an ethnic group and in the mode of assimilation these call forth differences ponderable and demonstrable also externally ... Itw^ouldbea most attractive undertaking — if only as regards clothing — to examine the different behaviour of the nationalities living here and of the Hungarians towards the transformation of one and same ancient piece of clothing or of a cultural phenomenon descended from higher levels. In Hanika's opinion, namely, assimilation takes place at all times in the spirit of a certain inherited ideal. In Hungary, similar objective examinations belong to the tasks to be performed in the future" 5 . During the decades passed since the publication of Gertrud Palotay's article quite a few researchers examined the manifestation of taste of the Hungarians and of the nationalities living in Hungary in the above sense. If we have quoted here the above in connexion with the adorning activity of a Kiskunhalas gipsy woman, we did so because this meant an extraordinary opportunity to perceive the apperance of reception and assimilation at their firsttrages and attached to one single person. When adorning her blouses, Mrs. Kolompár gives expression to the taste of her people, even if no one else has done so before her in the way she is doing it. Whenever, while adorning, she incorporates in her w 7 ork elements taken from foreign environment in a w T ay that eventually they incontestably express her people, she follows the course of assimilation as stated by Hanika. Still, her adorning activity is not folk-art and the garments produced by her are not articles of popular costumes either. We could though assume the existence of some kind of gipsy folk-art starting with her adorning activity, however this would be a mere conjecture. In Mrs. Kolompár's dabbling in art one can find solely the determining effect of the gipsy taste. The practice of this individual activity in the gipsy community, of one that could make it folk-art is absent — and will be absent also in the future. Neither can one observe that Mrs. Kolompár's articles of clothing are worn within the gipsy community, through which they could become pieces of gipsy folk-art. When wearing these bodices, Mrs. Kolompár counts as backward even in the eyes of the gipsy women and girls of Cserepes. Without the fundamental changes come about in the lives of our gipsies, who used to live in tents not long ago, the adorning activity of Mrs. Kolompár could not have been realized at all. Within the limits of tribalism an adorning activity of this kind w r ould not have been possible. Still, the very fact that the changes taking place in the life of gipsies have been accelerated by our days, precludes the possibility that the adorning activity of Mrs. Kolompár could find followers even in the town of Kiskunhalas itself. — Which of course does not mean that gipsy folk-art could not be born here even in the near future. Also the self-made „zsaba" differing from the traditional ones belongs to Mrs. Kolompár's garments. (Fig. 3.) She also has a traditional one. The „zsaba" 1 bought from her is adorned with her own embroidered drawings. The adornments and figures on it can also be understood as substitutes for the amuletlike symbols appearing on the traditional „zsaba"-s, therefore we have to deal with them together with Mrs. Kolompár's cloths. From the occurrence of representations of animals identical with those on the cloths conjectures can be put forward that Mrs. Kolompár attached significance to these drawings. THE CLOTHS' OL MRS. KOLOMPÁR In 1963, when I noted down the information about the cloth first acquired from Mrs. Kolompár which she called a „wxdding cloth", I could not accept her statements even while I was taking the records. When she said that such cloths were presented by the Kiskunhalas gipsies on the occasion of weddings, she contradicted her own statements. Another time she asserted that nobody else in the gipsy row made such cloths but she. The latter statement is true. So much so that prior to this cloth not even she did make any of the kind either. In the wedding customs of the Kiskunhalas gipsies two kinds of cloths had a function. The largesized (1.50 x 1-50 centimetres) silk cloths only differed in their vivid patterns from the silk scarfs used by the Kiskunhalas peasant women and sometimes 5 Gertrud PALOTAY: Manifestations of taste in folk clothing — NÉ XXXII. 1940. pp. 186—196. 182
