Őriné Nagy Cecília (szerk.): A népművészet a 19-20. század fordulójának művészetében és a gödöllői művésztelepen (Gödöllői Múzeumi Füzetek 8. Gödöllői Városi Múzeum, 2006)
Folk Art as Reflected in the Art at the Turn of the 19,h and 20th Centuries and in the Art Colony of Gödöllő. Abstracts in English / Angol nyelvű összefoglalók
224 Abstracts in English 224 Ilona VISZÓCZKY ethnographer, "Matyó" Museum of Mezőkövesd: CONTRIBUTIONS TO CHANGES IN THE WEAR OF MEZŐKÖVESD (FIRST HALF OF THE 20™ CENTURY) The ethnographic group called "Matyó" came into being in the 18 t h— 1 9 t h centuries. It covers primarily the population of the major country town Mezőkövesd, though two villages in its vicinity, Tard and Szentistván, are also held to belong here. The cultural group differing from the neighbouring groups by its Roman Catholic faith became famous primarily for its extraordinarily colourful free-design embroidery and for its rich costume. Not only has it been, since the turn of the 19 t h and 20 t h centuries, the best-known representative of the Hungarian folk art and of the national culture, but also it became an emblem of Hungary for the foreigners. The characteristic textile culture has developed in extremely controversial social circumstances in which process everything had a role and resulted in that the "Matyó" folkloric tradition has been in the center, for a century, of the ethnographic and anthropological interest. Building up and constructing of the national culture was going on in Hungary in the very end of the 19 t h century, at the turn of the 19 t h and 20 t h centuries — just the same as in England and in Scandinavia in this period. The nobility and the historical middle class went back in this search primarily to the rural traditions, believing that the representative forms of the rural culture that were still alive, were also old and archaic and were vestiges of a common national tradition. They will pick out from this stuff some elements of their choice to formulate the national culture; they think this - to our today's knowledge mainly 19 l h century rural culture belonging to the new stylistic period of folk art - to be the tenable common national heritage. The "Matyó" wear will be in this period the embodiment of the representative Hungarian image. The "Matyó" folklore became famous all over the country and also abroad in the process of delineating the romantic national self-image of this period. It is due to tourism starting from the beginning of the 20 t h century that creations of the "Matyó" folk art as characteristic pieces of Hungarian folk art reach different parts of the world. It can be observed in the second half of the 20 t h century that Hungarian folkloric tradition; folk culture will be identified all over the world exclusively with the "Matyó" wear. Flourishing of the well-known "Matyó" folk art has started in the middle of the 19 t h century with the finely wrought leather works of the furriers. "Matyó" needleworks and patterns applied to tapestry (to the embroidered trimming of bed sheets called " lepedővég ), to the men's Sunday best shirts with slack flaunting sleeves as well as to the men's and women's aprons called "sure" were known at the turn of the 19 t h and 20 t h centuries not only as motifs characteristic of a folk group, but they also became the means suitable to evoke the representative Hungarian image.
