Urisk Erzsébet: A viaszolt hímes tojás készítése a Muravidéken - Hogy ne menjen feledésbe 1. (Lendva, 2009)

Summary

gifts of eggs to the boys who sprinkle them with water in the Easter fertility ritual, while elsewhere, such as in the Mura lands, eggs are given by godparents to their godchildren. The most common colour tor Easter eggs is red: according to tradition coloured by the blood of Christ spilled for mankind.

Decorated eggs are to be found in the folk art traditions ot all the Central European peoples. The colouring of the eggs takes place in the run-up to Easter, usually during Holy Week. In earlier times the eggs were dyed plain colours (mainly reds, greens and yellows) using natural materials. The most common natural dye materials were onion skins, logwood, soot and oak bark. Often, the eggs were later decorated (or colloquially: embroidered) using a variety of techniques, including engraving and batik work; though etching and plant appliqué were also commonly used. This is the origin of the local, Hungarian name ‘himes tojás’ (embroidered eggs’).

The embroidered’ pace egg is one of the little treasures ofthe folk art of the Mura lands. In Ferenc Gönczi’s 1914 volume: ‘Göcsej s kapcsolatasan Hetés vidékének és népének összevontabb ismertetése’ (A Brief Introduction to the Tand and People of Göcsej and Hetés), we find an extremely rich and lively tradition of egg decoration. By the 1960s though, when Slovenian ethnographer Niko Kuret noted the subject, the tradition was beginning to die out.

That egg decoration has survived and that, today too, we can talk ol a living tradition, is in no small way due to the key role played by the author ofthis book, Erzsébet Urisk. Erzsébet has been attracted by this fragile example offolk art since her childhood, when she learned the art of egg dyeing from her mother. At the beginning of the 1990s Mrs. Urisk discovered egg embroidery’, and then began a steadfast and passionate ethnographic research through reading, museum visits and the seeking out of the older women who still held the knowledge ot the techniques of egg decoration. As she lives and works in Dobronak she began her researches there, later branching out into the villages of Hetés and then the whole of the Mura lands.

Erzsébet Urisk has not only researched the batik technique of egg embroidery’, but mastered it, too. She now teaches egg decoration workshops and her own works are renowned in professional circles across the Carpathian Basin. In 2006 in Hungary she was awarded the title ofFolk Artist’. Erzsébet s attraction to the art of egg embroidery ’ has inspired her to share her theoretical knowledge and practical experience with others by means of this book. In the book she first introduces the role of embroidered’ pace eggs in popular culture through the Easter traditions of the Mura lands, then moves on to explain the techniques and motifs of egg dyeing and decoration, affording special attention to those of the Hétes area in particular. The book deals not only with theoretical matters but contains detailed instructions and a collection of motifs for those who wish try the batik technique to make their own ‘embroidered’ pace eggs in the style of the Mura lands.

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