Folk Embroidery
Bernadett Papp of Mező kövesd displays her skills of embroidery.
Photo courtesy of Office of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Hungarian Open Air Museum
The original purpose of embroidery on garments was to strengthen the hemline, but it later began appearing as decoration on both costume and household textiles. The techniques and embroidery styles vary according to their base material and yarn type. In the eighteenth century, free-hand floral designs of various stitch types began replacing the older geometric motifs. This led to the development of several distinctive regional and local styles of embroidery; the best-known of these come from Kalocsa, Kalotaszeg, and Mező kövesd.
