Begovácz Rózsa – Burján István – Vándor Andrea: Folk Art in Baranya County (Pécs, 2008)

Folkweaves

Hungarians at the Eastern foot of the Mecsek and around Geresd fitted red and black woven stripes into the sleeves of women's shirts in the second half of the nineteenth century, Croatians in the Dráva region did so even in the middle of the twentieth century. There was a woven ornament on the old undershirts in the Ormánság and in the Drávaszög region. On great festivals a white tulle shirt with loose sleeves was put on above the tighter shirt with woven ornaments. Beautifully woven plain and fine linens with a rippling surface, yellowed with saffron or striped with natural colours of flax and cotton are known from the Ormánság, Drávaszög and Szigetvár, which were used for making tablecloths, bedspreads as well as costumes for festivals and mourning. Textiles used in the household were often woven white on white in Baranya with introducing thicker white rows of thread or by pulling in the thread by a needle between the threads of the loom (called szálbehúzás) in the form of simple geometrical patterns, but the surfaces could be covered with more complicated patterns as well (with motifs resembling rings, waterflows, peas, tulips, roses, rosemaries at Reformed Hungarians of the Szigetvidék, Székelys, people from Ormánság, Sokac in the Drava region, Bosnians around Pécs, and Sokac from Mohács). We can find striping standing out in relief as an ornament on overally white as well as white with red weaves in the Ormánság, which was created by holding together several threads in pulling in the weft. This kind of ornament was accompanied by the pattern called szedettes ('picked-up'), made with the help of extra shafts, which was usually geometrical, but sometimes stylized floral or bird motifs also appeared. Patterns were also woven with corded cotton, though its use became general only at the turn of the century in the Ormánság. Blue, yellow, pink, even green colours occured on their weaves, but these never mixed. Women in Ormánság used a wider and higher loom than weavers of other ethnical groups, so their linens were wider, their technique was different. They always used four shafts and a pedal for changing the shafts for weaving, which is necessary for the basic motif of a characteristic pattern (called darázslépes resembling wasps' honeycomb) and for ajouré. In the Reformed villages around Szigetvár the pattern was always weaved in with one colour, red - blue, pink and yellow 34