Kepéné Bihar Mária - Lendvai Kepe Zoltán (szerk.): Hagyományőrző hímző szakkörök a Muravidéken - Hogy nem menjen feledésbe 2. (Lendva, 2012)
Embroidery Societies in Muravidék
Embroidery Societies in Muravidék Preserving the Tradition It is common public knowledge that tradition is well-worth preserving for generations to come. Regardless of the value we put on tradition, when it is not cherished and without making the effort to preserve it, it can be lost. The different art forms in folklore have attracted the most interest from the public and brought it to the forefront of culture. Poets, writers, artists and scientists have researched and saved these ethnographic treasures in order to learn from them, to be inspired by them - just think of the age of romanticism! The lifestyle, works of art and interest of those artists have helped to preserve quite a few traditional habits, which the people themselves regarded as outdated and something to be ashamed of. In Slovenia, the autochthonous f fungarian minority is very proud of their Hetési heritage - of the costumes and the embroidery. Nowadays, it is hard to imagine that the treasures of Hetési were almost lost forever. Dr. Edit Kerecsényi, the retired director ofthe Thúry György Museum ofNagykanizsa rediscovered the treasures of Hetési in 1986 when she expanded her ethnographic research to the Mura region. She studied the ethnographic collections ofthe Ethnographic Museum of Budapest, the Göcseji Museum of Zalaegerszeg, the Thúry György Museum ofNagykanizsa and seized the opportunity to do a field research of the collections in the Pomurje Museum in Muraszombat and in the Gallery and Museum of Lendava. In the 1980s and 1990s, Dr. Kerecsényi initiated the interest in Hetési textile culture and gained professional recognition of the Hetési folk art and handiwork. At the time Dr. Kerecsényi carried out her research, the Hetési textile culture was not a living tradition - the costumes were not worn; the patterns were not used in embroidery. By the 1930s the Hetési textile culture was overtaken by the bourgeois clothing and housing culture. Fortunately, with the help of a few old ladies and some preserved pieces of clothing, they were able to reconstruct the Hetési pattern. T he most impressive examplesof Hetési folklore are the fabrics and the richly embroidered attire. For the Hetési handiwork societies, white-cloth embroidery is the most important and the most used motif The motifs are mostly freely drawn motifs and flowers. From the 1870s they frequently used simple and elaborate “Subrika” patterns, (the Subrika pattern is a thread, pulled out of a cloth - or any other kind of fabric - and replaced by a coloured thread.) The speciality in Hetési embroidery is 78
