Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 27. (Budapest, 2009)

Lilla TOMPOS: „... Száztíz szál sinor húsz gombra."

'ONE HUNDRED AND TEN EENGTHS OF BRAID FOR TWENTY BUTTONS...' DATA ON THE HISTORY OF THE HUNGARIAN BRAID BELT SUMMARY A characteristic and attractive accessory of Hungarian men's attire is the belt, which was produced in different ways. A belt was used to hold in place clothing that fitted the body at the top but which was baggy from the waist down. According to the testimony of burial finds from the period of the Hungarian Conquest (ninth century), a pouch and other accessories were attached to the belt. As well as serving practical functions, the belt also indicated rank, with the material of its decorative mountings and the craftsmanship of their execution reflecting the wearer's position in the social hierarchy. A prominent, magical protective role was attributed to belts in the cultures of antiquity just as in Christian cultures too. Light has been cast on their use in Hungary by archaeological finds. Leather-and-metal belts, too, have been unearthed; their rectangular or disk-shaped mountings were embellished with geometrical designs, letters, and symbols, and with the initials of the Virgin Mary and Christ. Use of this type of belt can be traced right the way from the twelfth to the late seventeenth century. The belt played a significant role in knightly culture also, since in the ceremony for the bestowing of knighthood not just the giving of weapons - a sword with a strap, armour and spurs played an important part, but also the buckling on of the sword. In the sixteenth-seventeenth century, belts with mountings continued to be made, but belts produced in various ways from many different types of material also appeared. The ground was embellished with stones in metal settings or was embroidered with thread, but it also happened that belts without a ground were woven from silk or from ribbons of different colours and widths. The influence of Western Europe in the eighteenth century visibly renewed Hungarian men's attire and this change was apparent in the accessories, too. While earlier on we could encounter braid belts in the written and pictorial sources only sporadically, from this time forward invoices, account-books, price lists issued by guilds, and probate inventories all bear witness to the supremacy of this type of belt. We publish a lengthy exchange of letters concerning the making of a fashionable braid belt of this kind. On the one hand, this correspondence is a curiosity from the history of costume, while on the other, if we read it attentively, it casts light on the formal and technical characteristics of these artefacts. The debate takes place between the archivist of a manor belonging to the Károlyi family and a button-maker master who did not meet the wishes of his customer. The customer had ordered a braid belt made from 110 lengths of hexagonal crimson braid with buttons made from gold thread. Instead, the button-maker had made it from square braid, in other words the braid used for uniforms and other clothing. The customer had not accepted the 123