Horváth Attila – Solymos Ede szerk.: Cumania 2. Ethnographia (Bács-Kiskun Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei, Kecskemét, 1974)
J. Vorák: Kolompár Kálmánné kiskunhalasi cigányasszony kézimunkái
The self-made „zsaba" of Mrs. Kolompár differed from the general type as to its measurements and material alike; as well as also in the way it was produced in. It was just different. She drew and embroidered it all over with the same childish designs and figures as her cloths. When I met her in the market and asked her to sell it to the Museum, she evaded with pretexts : it was not nice, common, — she had made it only for herself; I should wait and she would make a nicer one for us. I insisted on the one she wore. I said that I needed just that one, in addition to her cloths. On the next day she brought it to the Museum. To the question, why she did not wear a „zsaba" of the kind worn by the others, she answered that she also had such ones but preferred the one she wore because she had made it herself and nobody else had one like it. Mrs. Kolompár cut the backside of that „zsaba" probably of a piece of some old kitchen splash guard. She deliberately let a detail of the red pattern of the old kitchen hangings to be seen on the inside of the lap, so that it should be „nicer". All over the other surfaces of the „zsaba" she then drew and stitched „her own ideas". (Sic!) Each of her drawings she previously drew in ink pencil on the material and then embroidered them. While examining the drawings of the „zsaba", I was asking her: —- Do you like to draw very much? — Yes, I do — that's what I like most. — Since when do you draw? — 1 always did. When I was a little girl, I smoothed away the soil with my palm, took a twig and with its end I drew on the even ground. When I got tired of it, I wiped it away and started a new one. — What did you draw? — All sorts of things ; what came into my mind, what I saw and what people told me. — Can you draw everything? — Sure 1 can, everything. — Could you also draw a spacecraft? — What on earth is that? — By what people travel to the moon. —• If I saw it, I would draw it, too. — You did not see what people related, either, and still you said you could draw it. — Tales is another thing. I put a sheet of paper before her, gave her a pencil to draw, — to fill the paper with drawings, to draw anything what came to her mind. She readily snatched at the idea. Not a bit did she feel disturbed at my standing; beside her and watching; her. She drew T Contiez о nuously and very quickly, without the slightest inhibition. Just as the designs on her cloths, also her drawings were produced in a line, proceeding from the left to the right. While drawing, she kept relating, rather as if to herself, what was going to be born under her hand. „Birth" should be interpreted strictly and word for word in this instance. The essence of these drawings needed not to be subsequently and separately announced. While they were being made I could note down which was which. Mrs. Kolompár created her figures, animals, trees and other objects founding herself on her memories, still they were living realities. For her they came to life the moment she had drawn them, and not only that : they also had feelings, they acted, got into mutual connection and all of them fitted themselves to the world of the gipsy woman who had created them. (Fig. 4.) There was no question of any sort of a [-»reconstructed unity. While drawing the stork she kept saying: „Stork, stork what a good bird you are. Won't you be nice?" There was no connection of any kind between the horned bird drawn next and the stork. However, Figures 3. and 4. of the first line were drawn in a way that first the drawing (3) representing a little dog then the one (4) of a child got ready, then she hesitated for a while and on the spur of an idea, drew a leash from the neck of the dog to the hand of the child. The two drawings were united to one, the two figures came into interaction, the dog became the child's property. Drawing No. 5. of the second line represents a stork, drawing No. 9. of the third one is a sour cherry-tree. When drawing No. 1. of the first line turned out to be a stork, Mrs. Kolompár did not now herself that drawing No. 5. coming under it would be similarly a stork and that under the latter a sour cherry-tree would come. Still as soon as while drawing the second stork she explained that it was the brother of the one above it and when also the sour cherry-tree was ready, she stated that the second stork was standing on the top of that tree. The young girl No. 7. became the daughter of the old man No. 6., and about drawing No. 10., representing a washing machine, Mrs. Kolompár declared already while 176
