Slipper embroidery will be the central theme of Szeged Slipper Day, which will be held on Saturday in the Szent-Györgyi Albert Agórá. The event will also include an exhibition, a folk dance presentation, a film premiere and a conference - the Szeged Slipper Foundation .
According to the announcement, the event is organized for the sixth time to promote this special footwear. At an event specially supported by the Szeged regional working group of the Hungarian Academy of Arts, the awards for the slipper head embroidery and design competition, which received more than 117 entries, and the award for Szeged slippers, which was awarded for the second time, will be presented.
The Central and Western Transdanubian Regional Association of Hungarian Creative Artists is preparing a special toy for children. The publication "Toy collection with Szeged slippers" will also be presented for the first time at the event.
Ferencné Fetter, an embroiderer, folk craftsman, master of folk art, and her certified slipper embroiderer students hold a slipper embroidery demonstration, which you can actively participate in, the younger ones can design and color a motif on the slipper head, and the slightly older and adults can also try embroidery.
The festive program will feature 150 folk dance children. The Ásotthalmi Bogárzó Folk Dance Group, the Árendás Dance Group and the Kankalin Folk Dance Group from Hódmezővásárhely, the Csanád Dance Group, the Domaszéki Kiskaláris Folk Dance Group, the Kiszombor Folk Dance Group, as well as the local Hatetudnád Dance Group and the Szeged Dance Group will participate.
This year, for the first time, members of Tápe's Gyékényző Szőtt Egyesület will take part in the program, and they will show those interested how mat slippers are made, and those with an entrepreneurial spirit can try mat weaving themselves.
At the slipper fair, you can buy on the spot from Hungarian and Vojvodina slipper masters, and they also take orders for individual needs. The fair is enriched by the offer of folk art and handicraft products related to slippers with the help of FolkArt Folk Art Shop in Szeged.
Interested parties can listen to presentations by industrial artist Zita Attalai, ethnographic researcher Veronika Vukov, and clothing designer Szénia Balássy-Berezvai at the conference entitled Changes and Rethinking the Motifs of Szeged Slipper Embroidery. In Fókus, the slipper embroidery exhibition will feature the works of the slipper embroidering students of Ferenc Fetter and Tünde Mészáros, the most beautiful entries from the slipper head embroidery competition, dresses with slipper embroidery patterns by Horváth-Kriska Hajnalka, as well as a selection from the collection of the Szeged Slipper Foundation.
At the event, the short films made by the Szeged Elephant Studio about the Szeged slipper, the slipper craftsmanship, and the fashion of the Szeged slipper will be shown.
The five-hundred-year history of Szeged slippers can be traced back to the age of subjugation. There was a serious demand for light, attractive wear in the Southern Great Plain, and with the start of the Outdoor Games and the boom in domestic tourism between the two wars, the Szeged slippers began to flourish again.
The slipper craft became independent in 1922, when four famous Szeged craftsmen - out of the more than forty who were actively working at the time - Lajos Ménösi, Mátyás Nagy, János Ótott, Gyula Tuksa personally presented their "products" to the Minister of Trade at the time, who was "deeply moved" it also contributed to independence.
The independent workshops almost ceased to exist in 1951 with the establishment of the slipper cooperative. Sándor Rátkai, the legendary master of making sewn, turned-out slippers, died in 2011 at the age of 98.
The Szeged slipper is called unique not only because of its uniqueness, but also because each size is made on the same shoe and becomes right-footed or left-footed as it is stepped on.
In 2018, the Szeged slipper was added to the national register of intellectual cultural heritage.
(MTI)
Photo: szeged.hu
