This is the official Gulyas Pot from the Bethlen Communities in Ligonier, PA. In this picture, chef Szep Lajos is serving up gulyas at the 3rd Hungarian Americans Together conference held at the facility in June 26-27, 2008.

About the Bethlen Communitities
The Bethlen Communities was founded in 1921 as a residence for orphans who had lost parents in mine disasters and other tragedies. In the 1930s, it evolved into a home for the aged when the people tending to the orphans began to require special services for the aged. In 1979, the orphanage closed it's doors after tending to more than 3,000 children for nearly 6 decades. The Bethlen Communities now has a capacity of over 100 beds and twenty retirement cottages and recently opened hospice and home health services. The Home is a church related, nonprofit subsidiary of the Hungarian Reformed Federation of America.
For more information check bethlen.com

This is a video of the 2009 St. Stephen's Day celebration in Roswell, GA. Members of the Atlanta Hungarian Meetup and participants of the monthly Hungarian Worship Service came together and formed a dance troupe to perform at this event. In addition, poems were recited, songs were sung and a potluck dinner followed the church service and celebration. More than 150 people attended, making it the largest event in Meetup history. See the link attached below for a taste of the celebration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h1Akr5ZOhY

The Tisza Folk Dancers entertained guests as they danced to music from the Balogh’s Gypsy Cimbalom Band at the the 2009 Hungarian American Coalition Gala Dinner. The event was held at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington DC. The following distinguished guests can be seen at the two tables pictured: evening honoree, John C. Whitehead, Gov. George Pataki, Ambassador Ferenc Somogyi, Ambassador Bert Walker, Ambassador Donald Blinken, Mrs. Edith Kish Lauer and The Honorable Annette Lantos.

Festival of Trees:
in the Museum of the American Hungarian Foundation

DECEMBER 7, 2008 - JANUARY 25, 2009

The 20th Annual Festival of Trees features Christmas trees representing 16 countries, all trimmed by members of local ethnic community groups and the international Sister Cities of New Brunswick. The trees feature handmade decorations and showcase traditions unique to each country. Also shown is a special Menorah for Hanukkah. Countries represented are: America, Belarus, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hispanic-Latino people, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Poland, Scotland, Sweden and Ukraine.

Accompanying the Festival of Trees is another special exhibition - Christmas Postage Stamps From Around the World. There are stamps from more than 160 countries, including the first
Christmas stamp issued in Canada in 1898.

http://www.ahfoundation.org/

Description of CHRISTMAS IN HUNGARY: THE NATIVITY PLAN
The popular Nativity plays in Hungary are centered around amusing jokes, songs and acts performed by shepherds dressed in huge fur capes worn inside out. The players carry a homemade manger with them or a small house in the shape of a church. Nowadays, it is the children who perform the Nativity plays, except for one or two Székely villages in Transylvania, where grown men present the miracle plays, with the peculiar addition of formidable masks made of animal skins worn by the shepherds.

The oldest parts of these Christmas plays in Hungary are the Latin liturgical plays that were introduced in the eleventh century. The most important scene in the Hungarian play is the pastoral. The contrasts between good and evil, rich and poor are depicted with great simplicity and expressiveness.

In Hungary the Christmas trees appeared in towns in the 1840’s and 1850’s. The honeybread, mézeskalács hanging on the tree here was decorated with designs by Patricia Fazekas, curator of the Museum.

Hungarian Sisters Impact Holiday Traditions

By Kathy A. Megyeri

Two Hungarian sisters have profoundly impacted holiday traditions in the United States. In New York City on Fifth Avenue dressed for holiday tea at the American Girl store, mothers, daughters and their dolls are dressed alike, thanks to the influence of Mariska Karasz (1898-1960) who introduced motifs to children’s clothing in the ‘30's; her outfits were worn by Shirley Temple and Princess Elizabeth. If you dress up for New Year’s Eve, no doubt you might be wearing a piece with fine embroidery and intricate applique, the influence again of Mariska Karasz who dressed Mrs. Paul G. Mellon, Mrs. Flagler, and Mrs. James Roosevelt, Jr. in the ‘30's. Buying a stitched wall-hanging as a gift or purchasing a needlework kit for your mother? As needlework editor at House Beautiful from 1952-53, Mariska brought the art of stitchery and embroidery into the American home and revitalized the industry. She’s remembered for telling Americans, “You are more creative than you think.”
Her sister Ilonka Karasz influenced the Christmas cards you mail and the gift paper in which you wrap your presents. Beginning in the ‘20's and really in the ‘40's and ‘50's, Ilonka illustrated books, book jackets, wrapping paper, line drawings, wood-block prints and lithographs. She was one of the first women to work with lithography as a fine art and popularized contemporary American graphic art through the publication of holiday greeting cards. In 1941, she began designing wrapping paper and thus made fine art available to the masses. She designed the first nursery ever for the very modern “American child,” so if you purchase small-scale, colorful children’s furniture this year, thank this interior designer who also built her reputation as one of the top wallpaper designers in America in the late 40's. Surely your holiday season would not be nearly so festive without the influence of the Karasz sisters. So, who were they and how is their influence still being felt this year?

Ilonka

Ilonka Karasz was born on July 13, 1896 in Budapest to Samuel and Mary Karasz. She had two younger siblings, Mariska and Steve. The family lived primarily in Budapest but spent part of each year in the country so the children developed an early interest in nature which they brought to their handicraft classes in public school. Their father was a silversmith but died when the children were young, so their mother moved to the U.S. Since Mary wanted her children educated in Hungary, they remained there until they graduated.
Ilonka was the first woman admitted to the Royal School of Arts and Crafts in Budapest. She held an exhibition there in 1912 and the next year left for America to join her mother. They lived in Greenwich Village and then built a home in Brewster, NY. Ilonka married William Nyland, a Dutch chemist and accomplished pianist who worked for the U.S. National Defense Organization as a translator during WWII. He received his PhD from Columbia University. Ilonka became a Dutch citizen through marriage and in 1929 became a U.S. citizen. All through her life, she continued to use her maiden name but signed it as Ilona, then Ilonka and occasionally Helen.
Following her marriage, the couple built their own home on Gage Hill. Its 21 rooms was described as a real “masterpiece” as Ilonka decorated curtains, furniture and plates. The home’s modern custom-built furniture was her own design. After the home was featured in House Beautiful in 1928, Ilonka developed art classes for the area’s members. However, she remained part of the Greenwich Village scene because she found it liberated her from the “Old World” prejudice she encountered in Hungary where women could not compete with men in art, so she established herself in her own right as an artist of unique ability, diversity and energy.
Her striking appearance was photographed in the late 1910's and early 1920's by friend and fellow Hungarian-American Nicholas Muray. With her black hair and dark brown eyes, she posed for his pictures theatrically and in exotic costumes. One picture appeared in Vanity Fair in 1921, which heightened her New York status. Her friends–novelist Willa Cather and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay–helped her achieve the status of “woman of note.”
Then in 1914, a group of European-American artists founded the society of Modern Art which published the Modern Art Collector magazine in which she included designs for dress goods, theatrical posters, book illustrations, covers, advertisements, and decorative borders that were modern and extreme in style and subject. They were primarily images of women including candid nudes and ballerinas with harlequins. The New York department store Bonwit Teller and Company featured her advertisements of young women with large, dark eyes, small dark lips, short hair cuts, and bold patterned clothing with abstract floral designs. Here, she applied modern design to promotional use.
In 1916, she painted furniture; the first was a blanket chest similar to those in Hungary. The interior of the lid featured a brightly-colored heart sprouting a flower against a scalloped background, an image she also used on the cover of a magazine. The interior of the chest included a phrase in Hungarian: made by Ilona Karasz with God’s help in the year 1916 in the summertime.
In 1921, she started a Hungarian theatre group. She continued contributing works to avant-garde publications, taught, studied, submitted designs to contests, exhibited works, and designed flyers and playbills. That same year, she painted a striking self-portrait. She also worked as a textile design teacher at the Modern Art School and won textile design contests between 1916-1921 that allowed her to have her work manufactured. For Greenwich Village’s weekly magazine, she contributed ink drawings of nuns, Christmas objects, ballerinas with harlequins, and fashionable women with large, dark eyes and bobbed haircuts.
Ilonka’s primary artistic influences were from Austria and from Budapest (at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). Her work consisted of stylized natural motifs, two-dimensional patterns, simplified ornamentation, and abstract and geometric patterns influenced by Hungarian art and filled with bright colors and floral designs. She submitted images to the Hungarian-language magazine, Magyar No, in New York which featured her work on the cover of their July, 1927 issue.
As a graphic artist, she worked with newspaper advertisements, magazine covers, book jackets, and print making, taking it from commercial art to fine art. Her magazine covers were often personal in their style and subject matter. She was more interested in having her work presented than in the magazine’s particular message, so her work appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country, the New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. She was best known for her work at the New Yorker from April, 1925, where her woodcut-style, cropped image in red, black, and white of sky-scrapers with a single potted flower on a window sill appeared to her last (her 186th) image of fall foliage with electric colors that was shown in Oct., 1973. Her covers were peaceful and pleasant in a world of picnics and town dances instead of wry humor and elite New York society and current events. She designed covers as well for the New Yorker as a free-lance activity but claimed not to know what made the editors pick one sketch over another. All had much detail, rich in activity. and vivid colors. She avoided the comic human figure in a small group in favor of an entire scene or crowd and adopted the style of panoramic composition in 1925.
Beginning in the ‘20's and really in the ‘40's and ‘50's, she illustrated books, book jackets, wrapping paper and line drawings. In fine art, her printing primarily took the form of wood-block prints and lithographs. She was one of the first women to work with lithography as a fine art and popularized contemporary American graphic art through the publication of holiday greeting cards. In 1941, she began designing wrapping paper. With the American Artists Group, she promoted a new concept, making fine art available to the masses.
Her most successful designs occurred in the late 1920's because this rich period included designs for interiors, furniture, silver, lighting and textiles. After the crash of ‘29, she changed her focus to designing affordable modern furniture in children’s nurseries and in wallpaper. Her furniture featured rounded edges and curving forms. In 1928, The American Designers’ Gallery featured the work of multiple designers. Its show toured 11 cities. Karasz designed the exhibition’s catalog. In one featured room, which was a modern studio apartment, she constructed a monumental davenport with built-in bookshelves as part of the modern trend to design multi-purpose furniture. People who moved from large, rural houses to smaller urban apartments needed efficient use of space and multi-use furniture. She included door hangings and hooked rugs.
Arts and Decoration described a room of hers as the first nursery ever designed for the very modern “American child.” Her furniture was small-scale with simple shapes, primary colors, an expansive chalkboard that ran the perimeter of the room, and a puppet stage to cater to a child’s imagination. In 1928, she designed lamps, silver and three silver-plated tea sets. Ilonka realized that she had to turn her attention to more affordable designs and appeal to a middle-class market if she were to achieve further success.
Her dining room also received wide recognition and favorable reviews when the side chairs were made with bird’s-eye maple and included a lighting fixture. The table folded down like a traditional gate-leg table so that it could be placed against a wall. She insisted upon rectilinear shapes, geometric forms, flat planes, and simple composition. Her furniture was of natural woods and was practical, “broad and restful.” The objects were modern in style, simple, functional and interesting. She even added secret nooks and drawers and embellished them all with peasant art. Ilonka was the only female founding member of the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen (in 1928) and in 1931, the Brooklyn Museum featured a round table-cover embroidered with a backgammon board design surrounded by a floral pattern similar to those seen in Hungarian costumes.
She expanded her reputation as an interior designer by working for numerous prominent New Yorkers. In 1926, she designed and decorated the Fifth Avenue Playhouse described as “by far the most interesting little cinema in New York City.” In 1928, she designed furniture and arranged the lighting and architectural details of the Junior League’s reception and club room in the Barbizon Hotel. In 1929, she designed lounge furniture for the Film Guild Cinema, and in 1930, she designed the interiors for the Dalton School on the upper East Side. House Beautiful featured her New York studio in 1928. She used natural woods in her furniture, painted the walls pink and green, and employed colored mirrors as tables and windowsill tops.
In the late 1920's, Karasz also worked extensively with textiles and created modern designs for modern fabrics for modern uses. She was one of the few designers who understood the Jacquard loom which resulted in her ability to design patterns suitable for weaving. She even used a three-part screen that enabled her to produce a stylized floral oilcloth. She experimented with new materials such as rayon so the Dupont-Rayon Company employed her in the later 1920's. In 1929, she created a striped rayon and linen fabric for automobile interiors and another fabric was used in the 1930 Fokker airplane. Her recognition grew as she created textiles both artistic and adaptable to mass manufacture.
In 1935, she turned to ceramic design, and four particular plates she designed influenced contemporary patterns. From July, 1934 to February, 1937, she designed for the Buffalo China Company and created new patterns for the Broadway Limited, Pennsylvania’s finest train.
After her daughter, Carola, was born, she returned to nursery design from rugs to quilts and furniture, particularly a two-part chest of drawers that was constructed so it could grow with the child. The mother used the base initially so she would not have to bend over. Then, she would remove the base to be used elsewhere as a bookshelf which could then be repositioned to raise the chest as the child grew older. Color coding the drawer interiors helped the child remember where to put his things. Nursery design was the only aspect of her career about which she wrote articles for publication, and the fact that the furniture could be used throughout a child’s early life appealed to families struggling through Depression Years. Her designs were featured at the New York World’s Fair in 1939 and at the Golden Gate International Exposition that same year.
In the late 1940's, Ilonka built her reputation as one of the top wallpaper designers in America. While solid, undecorated walls were still the norm in interiors, her wallpaper foreshadowed a postwar interest in patterned wall decorations. In the late 1930's, there was a renewed interest in patterned walls. In the 1940's, wallpaper design was thriving due to talented artists and new methods of printing. In June, 1947, Karasz used an experimental technique similar to making blueprints and paired her papers with superimposed motifs, all of which featured subjects from nature. An allover repeating motif, such as a chicken wire or fishnet over a related image (chicken and fish) was revolutionary. Sometimes, two or more wallpapers in a room at the same time were mixed. The most widely publicized of Karasz’s wallpapers was “Duck and Grasses.” Even the ALCOA Company commissioned Ilonka to experiment with aluminum in order to inspire new uses for the material, so she created a “mosaic of foil-covered plywood shapes in a variety of colors and textures.” She envisioned this as “a room central decoration in the home of tomorrow.”
By 1970, Karasz’s activity level began to decline, and in 1981, she died in her daughter’s care. Her greatest contribution was that she integrated her European-born vision into her American life for almost 60 years. She was foremost a practitioner of modern design in America. She pushed modern design into as many aspects of production as possible. She developed modern textiles for mass manufacture at an early date. She created furniture, silver and interiors. She united modern furniture design with modern ideas about childhood development with her nurseries in the 1930's. She capitalized on postwar consumer needs and technological advances through wallpaper design in the 1940's. But as early as 1919, the adjective used to describe her work was most often “modern.” Critic M.D.C. Crawford wrote in 1919, “her fame as a modern is rapidly spreading.” She was consistently considered ‘modern” for six reasons:
a. her sophisticated simplicity
b. her use of geometric forms
c. her consideration of how an object would affect the owner or user
d. her innovative materials and techniques
e. her use of the latest in manufacturing processes
f. her practical works that appealed to one’s emotions through color

As early as in the late 1910's, it was written that Ilonka’s textile designs showed her ability to cross successfully between design for commercial production and creativity as “purely an artistic process.” In both realms, she looked to folk art for inspiration and consistently worked in the modern vein with simplified, two-dimensional forms.
In 1918, she won a special prize for a black and white batik design related to a type of Hungarian needlework which demonstrated her “interest in the folk arts of her native country.” The American Art Student Magazine (1919) wrote, “Although Ilonka Karasz is but twenty-two years old, she is considered one of the best designers of modern textiles.”
In 1919, House Beautiful illustrated her prize winning design. Again, in 1929, House Beautiful claimed she was among the “first in the U.S. to incorporate modern art in silk design. Her success demonstrates a public readiness for change and creates designs suitable for machine production.”
American Artists Group in 1937 said, “She endows her expression with all the color and richness of a peasant art tradition.” House Beautiful described her nurseries as the most enchanting ever built as they balanced functional modern aspects with traditional elements.” In 1950, American Fabrics wrote, “One can picture her in the thickly-wooded forests of Hungary. Since she was born in Hungary, this may partially explain, when we consider the Tartar influence on Hungarian culture, her preoccupation with Eastern thought, a very real influence on her work.”
But Ilonka is most noted for her New Yorker covers for between 1925-1973, she created 186 of them. In 1954, Stuart Preston of the New York Times described her magazine covers as “whimsical, fresh, and lively glimpses of town and country.” Art News said her covers illustrate the more cheerful aspects of the life of middle-class inhabitants of city and suburbs and landscapes they know in the summer.” Brendan Gill wrote in 1975 in “Here at the New Yorker,” “Her perennially youthful art makes me believe, for, as long as I am in its presence, that I, too, am young.”

Mariska

Mariska was born in Budapest in 1898 and baptized as a Lutheran. She joined her mother and sister in New York just prior to WWI and enjoyed the avant-garde climate there in which feminism played a significant role. The two sisters fit well into the city’s new intellectual and cultural mix.
Ilonka was already established in Greenwich Village as a pioneer modernist
in painting and graphic design who taught and contributed to avant-garde publications. Since fashion was one area Ilonka left alone, Mariska filled the gap. Fabric and threads were integral to her career as a fashion designer and artist.
Like Ilonka, Mariska repeatedly changed her artistic focus. In the ‘20's, custom fashion designs for women were emerging so Mariska combined American style with Hungarian folk elements. In the early ‘30's, after her marriage and the births of her two daughters, she began to design children’s clothing that was both original and practical. In the mid-‘40's, after a devastating studio fire, she reinvented her career and created embroidered pictures and abstract wall hangings that appeared in museums and galleries across the U.S. (i.e. the American Craft Museum) and that garnered international attention.
Mariska was the second of three children. Her young brother, Steven, assisted both girls with their creative projects. Ilonka excelled in drawing and Mariska in sewing. She made stitches so tiny that she later wondered how her eyes ever saw to make them. Before she came to the U.S., she decided that she wanted to work with clothing and was already making blouses for herself and her sister. When she arrived in New York, she wore her hair fashionably short.
In New York, the sisters participated in Woodstock, the artists’ colony. Both sisters were close and their careers continually intersected. Mariska was often mistaken for Ilonka. In 1921, she wrote, “To describe one’s own sister is like describing one’s own anatomy. No one ever thinks of closely observing that which is part or almost part of them, since one grows right up with both without giving any thought to the question why.”
Ilonka was a willing model for her sister’s clothing designs and her reputation helped Mariska with her career, but Mariska had more of an interest in writing English and possessed a good command of the language. Unfortunately, her husband Donald from Minnesota divorced her in 1942. Mariska’s home in Brewster, NY was visited by Alexander Calder and Frank Lloyd Wright who asked her to make men’s ties, but she declined because she thought he wanted her to sew his designs rather than create her own. Since the Karasz name in Hungarian is a type of fish, that motif decorated her stationery and was often pictured in her work. Her daughter, Solveig, is still a professional ceramics artist with a studio in the Torpedo Factory in Old Towne, Alexandria, VA.
Mariska’s book, ADVENTURES IN STITCHES, is probably her most lasting legacy because it demonstrates the link between her fashion designs and Hungarian traditional folk art, particularly the influence of Godollo artists’ colony in 1901-1921. In 1917, the “made in America” movement encouraged American manufacturers to produce quality design independent of European models, and from 1910-1920, status-seekers demanded custom wardrobes . Women wanted impeccable fit, fabric combinations, trim, and details that could not be found in ready-made clothes. It was then that Mariska found her niche. She relied on the aesthetic ideals of her youth, modernized folk design, valued skilled craftsmanship, vivid colors, and integration of ornament into a garment’s structure. Her business and even her children’s wear was top of the scale.
The fashion business was growing and her timing was right when she transferred her talents from embroidery to fashion design. Ready-to-wear clothing was available, customers didn’t have time for two or three fittings for custom-made clothing, much of the country’s textile and clothing manufacturing base was turned over in 1941 to military production, and consumer goods were being rationed. There was limited international travel and diminished sources in European fashion houses. Thus, it was the sensible time for a career change.
Later, Mariska’s embroidered works of the ‘40's and ‘50's became unique works of art as well for embroidery and batiks in woven tapestry and needlework hangings for the wall were popular. Mariska’s embroidery added warmth and personality to plain, unadorned rooms. Part of post World War II’s emphasis on “good design” brought higher aesthetic ideals to mass-produced goods and therefore, the masses created a market for publications and exhibitions that sought to educate the public in recognizing good taste and incorporating it into the home. Personal expression was being valued so Mariska moved away from two-dimensional textile work and drew in materials and techniques to make three dimensions. Her tools were color, texture, pattern, and a strong belief that art belonged in everyday life.
House Beautiful highlighted the studios of the Karasz sisters in August, 1928 with written descriptions and black-and-white photographs. One writer described Mariska’s studio as a “reproduction as nearly as she can make it of a cottage room in her native Hungary.” She also mixed color, modern, and traditional materials from around the world. When she earned money, she traveled to Hungary to obtain craftsmen who could do the appliqued designs she wanted. In most cases, the garments were designed and cut in the U.S., sent to Hungary to be embroidered or appliqued, and returned to the U.S. to be assembled.
One of her designs was based on szur, the traditional man’s outer coat worn for centuries by Hungarian shepherds and peasants. They were long and heavy, made with white backgrounds and worn over the shoulders and fastened across the chest with sleeves seldom used. Sometimes, the sleeves were sewn shut and adopted for storage. Their popularity waned after WWI, but they became a symbol of Hungarian nationalism. In spring, 1926, Mariska presented a szur-inspired coat as a delightful “evening wrap,” and it became popular with celebrities photographed at high-profile events.
In addition to fine embroidery, Mariska incorporated intricate applique, which has a long Hungarian history. Embroidery was primarily floral in keeping with the Matyo folk embroidery style which emanated from Mezokovesd in northeastern Hungary. Mariska placed decorative insets on outfits and all-over patterns on jackets and vests. Traditional Hungarian folk applique employs leather or felt, but Mariska’s light-weight applique more closely resembles that made in Buzak in southeast Hungary, which primarily uses cotton and linen in appliques. Of course, Mariska used the finest materials and impeccable workmanship.
She also wrote “thoroughly good business letters” which she believed unusual coming from a woman. She wrote, “My customers are pleased that they can get from me unusual hand-made frocks which are not made in duplicate at a cost which is lower than usual for hand-made dresses that can be bought in the shops. I’m entirely satisfied with my profits.” She hired women to sew for her, mostly African-Americans. Her inspirations for her clothing came from San Francisco’s Chinatown, peasant pottery, Hungarian coats, museum objects, her sister’s textiles, her modern, informal life, and her inclination to collect materials and influences from a variety of sources.
In 1926, she recorded that she had a very steady clientele and some patrons bought whole wardrobes from her. She used the Social Register for her mailing list to target people who were daring enough to wear something different. The chemise dress was a favorite in order to keep the style simple and less restrictive. Tunic style dresses with abstract flowers were popular on which large areas of unadorned fabric were featured because most of the decoration was limited to the edges, bottom hems, ends of sleeves, and around the collars.
In 1931, motherhood led her in a new direction. She tried to find clothes for her daughter Solveig but was disappointed that only pastel clothing existed in fragile fabrics with fussy decorations, and “Solveig simply wasn’t that kind of baby.” Mariska wanted more original and more practical sturdy fabrics with bright colors. So she introduced more color, peasant-influenced designs, and quality craftsmanship with embroidery and applique. The fabrics were colorfast, study, and washable. The patterns allowed for ease of movement; fasteners like zippers were simple for small fingers, embellishments were playful, and the clothes were given clever names such as “Play with Me,” and “My Garden.”
From 1934-1941, Mariska catered to an exclusive clientele, and writers described her clothing as “heirlooms handed down lovingly from one child to another–they were timeless.” She usually made no more than six of one model and took care that duplicates didn’t go to little girls who would meet at the same party. Few examples of the children’s clothes survive, but some are in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.
In 1930, Mariska’s two fashion-conscious daughters modeled clothing for mother/daughter shows. The Depression years had little effect on them as they traveled, employed a cook, and had nannies to care for them. Mariska’s clothing also evolved during the period of development in the science of raising children. Women’s Wear Daily said that Mariska, as a mother of two young daughters, was “well-suited to designing children’s clothing and gained important insight into the needs of her small clients by observing her own children.”
At the same time, Mariska’s interest in modern children’s clothing coincided with Ilonka’s pioneering efforts to modernize the American nursery. They exhibited together at Saks Fifth Avenue in September, 1935. Mariska’s clothing featuring colors and cut that would allow the child to move freely and use special pockets and appliques melded with Ilonka’s furniture which was enjoyable for children to play on. Mariska argued that just as parents were carefully considering the surroundings of their children and incorporating modern nurseries into their homes, they should consider clothing in the “same modern light.” Just as Ilonka color-coded drawers to keep children’s items organized, Mariska designed clothing so that children could dress themselves, feel independent, and exercise their minds and muscles. It did no harm that young celebrities such as Princess Elizabeth and screen star Shirley Temple helped grow interest in the two sisters’ products. Mrs. Gary Cooper was a fan and visited her New York studio. It was no wonder then that Mariska’s custom clothing for wealthy families was trend-setting as well. Soon, Good Housekeeping and McCall’s were reproducing paper patterns for mothers to sew their own children’s clothes.
The 1938 collection reflected Mariska’s recent trip to Hungary with the re-appearance of the szur coat and the 1938 collection showed the parta, an elaborate head dress traditionally worn by unmarried Hungarian girls, in an advertisement for the show. During WWII, when Mariska could no longer travel to Europe for embroiderers, she went to Mexico and Guatemala.
A key aspect of her children’s clothing was motifs. She constructed dresses, playsuits, bibs with appliques, snowsuits, ice skating costumes, bonnets, hoods, mittens, and water-repellent gear. She even designed beach clothes for Bonwit Teller. But despite success with mass production of design, she still preferred personal interaction with clients and focused attention on her custom retail business. Some clients were Mrs. Paul G. Mellon, Mrs. Flagler, and Mrs. James Roosevelt, Jr.
In 1941, a studio fire ended her career as fashion designer. Fire, smoke, and water damage wiped out existing work as well as documentation of earlier work and priceless and intricate pieces of applique. At the same time, WWII affected her deeply and personally because Hungary and the U.S. were on opposite sides and limited her access to Hungarian craftsmen at the same time that Americans’ interest in Hungarian craftsmanship dampened. Thus, Mariska turned to writing instructional books on sewing and design, inspired by her daughters’ growing interests and developing skills. In the book entitled Fashion Is Our Business, Mariska was featured along with designers Edith Head and Hattie Carnegie. The book documented that the one thing children loved about their Mariska clothes was that each of them had a name; the “Lady Bug” dress had pockets made in the shape of insects, “Purple Cow” had an applique of that happy animal, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” had bloom-like buttons spilling out of a basket, “It’s Raining” had long drops splashing diagonally from the top to the bottom, and the “Go-Away” dress pictured an engine and coach traveling in a never-ending journey around the hem.
Mariska wrote in 1950 that “In Hungarian, embroidery is called Kezimunka, which literally translated, means handwork.” Mariska’s first two books on sewing led her to plan her book on embroidery, a new phase of her career. While she wrote, her framed and unframed wall hangings and freestanding room dividers were being shown in art galleries and museums. She had more than sixty solo shows between 1947-1960 and wrote a series of needlework lessons for House Beautiful in 1952-1953. She was contributing to the domestic popularity of embroidery, and wavers and dyers were her companions.
Although Ilonka, her sister, was serious and rarely spoke in public about her work, Mariska was vibrant, outgoing and eager to share her love and knowledge of embroidery and materials with others. In contrast to Ilonka, she embraced abstraction. In her works, she included Mexican horsehair cloth, post office string, scraps from friends’ knitting bags, clothesline, shoelaces, cello string, samples from fabric dealers, burlap used to wrap imported marble statues, sacks used to ship bananas, grass-cloth from the Philippines, Salvation Army ribbons, hand-dyed and hand-spun wools from the South, tailor’s canvas, open-mesh pineapple cloth, twine, cord, leather, hair, feathers, sequins, tinsel, silk, woolen yarn, fish line, natural linen, dressmakers’ cord, mohair, chiffon, nylon, Chemstrand, and even asbestos. She experimented with new materials and her friends sent her more samples.
She stitched while she talked, sitting on a couch or chair with materials in baskets around her. Sometimes, she worked outdoors where birds carried bits of thread away for their nests. She didn’t draw her designs, but created them as she progressed. She changed her designs as she went and constantly used nature as a source of inspiration. Her brother Steve made the frames and slats for her embroidery at the top and bottom which allowed the works to be rolled and shipped. In the 1950's, the prices ranged between $100-$700. Size was the major factor in price. She did commissions as well and included care instructions with all her works. To flatten them, she stored them under rugs in her home and when asked what to do about loose threads, she said, “Snip them off if they stick out.” Most of the works were considered on par with abstract paintings, but she was considered a “painter in thread,” not a weaver. Since American Homes in the ‘50's had expanses of unadorned walls, their long open-spaces provided an ideal canvas for artists like Mariska working with fabric. Mariska always believed her work was appropriate for modern houses “where flat walls need more than a painting.” She, however, considered her work true art and, for her, museums and galleries were her venues of choice.
Though it was fashionable to talk about texture in paintings, Mariska included real texture. She stressed originality and encouraged others not to waste stitches on someone else’s pattern or be hampered by a fear of criticism. She even told stories about her works: “New Potatoes” was inspired by a bag of potatoes that had gone to seed in her cellar; “Map Mixed With Territory” began as an autumn landscape and evolved to picture her home in Brewster, NY. In 1949, she completed her embroidery book Adventures in Stitches: A New Art of Embroidery, which the Washington Post in l975 still considered “the best on the market for those who aspire to do creative work.” Lessons included adding decorative embroidery to household items such as curtains, bedspreads, place-mats, napkins, chair cushions and lampshades. She suggested that embroidered motifs be inspired by other details in the home such as wallpaper patterns. She instructed readers to look to nature, showing a placement and napkin she had decorated that had been inspired by the shape of a seashell.
Her textiles stand out because of their close relationship to her handiwork. The printed patterns directly relate to stitches she made by hand, and the manufactured fabrics were promoted through House Beautiful as points of departure for women to introduce handwork into their own homes. She also held two teaching appointments: at Miami University in Oxford, OH and at the Haystack Mountain School, a prestigious craft school founded in 1950 in remote Maine.
In 1958, Mariska introduced new material to her embroideries: paper, both handmade and found. When asked if she had any favorite works, she said she was always fondest of what she had most recently completed. Her earliest embroidered pictures were representational images–portraits, landscapes, and objects–but her later works evolved into abstract styles. As needlework editor at House Beautiful from 1952-53, she brought the fine art of stitchery and embroidery into the American home.
From 1910-1950, Mariska developed three distinct phases of her career: women’s fashion designer, children’s fashion designer, and fiber artist. It was said that “she doesn’t work with her materials; she plays with them.” She received endorsements from the wives of the President of Studebaker Corporation and the Ford Foundation.
In the December, 1929 issue of the Christian Science Monitor, an article appeared entitled “Hungarian Ideas Modernized,” which said, “unlike most designers who seek to bring the animation of Eastern European dress to the attention of American women, Miss Mariska Karsasz has modernized her patterns of Magyar derivation until they are scarcely recognized as such.” Writers emphasized her modernity by connecting her to an American icon, the skyscraper, and called her use of applique “daring.” When using her Hungarian motifs, she often borrowed from Hungarian religious services to show the whole inner structure and basic unit of rural society.
The writer Sarah Booth Conroy of the Washington Post Times Herald in 1973 wrote, “Many people’s interest in stitchery credit the resurgence of interest in the art to articles written by Mariska Karasz which ran in 1950 in House Beautiful.” In 1961, the Museum of Contemporary Crafts presented an exhibition of her embroidered wall hangings. The director wrote, “Her appreciation of beautiful colors and textures in fabrics is an inheritance from the rich folkcrafts of her native Hungary,” and credited her with “one of the persons most responsible for stimulating a rebirth of stitchery in the U.S.”
In 2005, an exhibition called “High Fiber” was presented at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery. The exhibition booklet claimed, “In thirteen years of fiber work, she developed an impressive body of unique work and a reputation as an accomplished artist and craftsperson.”
So this holiday season, whether you are writing cards, wrapping gifts, dressing for an event, or playing “house” with your child, thank the two Karasz sisters who have impacted holiday seasons for years with their creativity, intelligence, graciousness, art, and design. Celebrating with their flair and love of Hungarian folk art still makes each home more welcoming, merry, and festive.

References

Callahan, Ashley, MODERN THREADS; FASHION AND ART BY MARISKA KARASZ, Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Georgia, 2007.
Callahan, Ashley, ENCHANTING MODERN; ILONKA KARASZ, Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Georgia, 2003.

After our arrival in America my family tried keep as many of our Hungarian Christmas traditions as possible. It was pretty easy then since there were no small children in our home. However, once I got married and started my own family it became more of a challenge, but with determination we were able to keep many of our Hungarian traditions.

While my daughter was small and too young to understand anything to do with Christmas it was easy. Once she got to be around 3 years old and in school is when we adopted new ways to keep my Hungarian traditions alive. Fortunately, my husband although he was American was always supportive. Just about this time we moved back to Wilmington, Delaware where my parents also lived which made it easier. Since both my husband and I were only children Christmas was always at our house. I could not keep the “Jézuska” since the overwhelming influence of Santa Clause was too much, but Santa Claus came to our house on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning. Usually the children, Christina and Péter, went to my parent’s home on Christmas Eve afternoon where they took naps. My Mother gave them a bath and dressed them up in their Sunday best. Then my parents would bring the children home to our house usually around 5 o’clock where my husband, John and I and his parents were ready and waiting. While they were away Santa came and brought the presents, which were all placed around the Christmas tree in the living room. We would all process to the living room form a semi circle around the Christmas tree and start off by praying the Our Father and the Hail Mary in English, and then we would sing, “Mennyből az angyal” followed by „Silent Night”. Only after this would the children receive their presents. At this time we were very lucky since one of the neighbors in our sub-division would dress as Santa to visit the children. I left the Christmas stockings by the front door and the visiting Santa brought them in saying that he took them when he first brought the gifts and is brining them back filled. As my children grew up and stopped believing in Santa Claus our practice stayed the same. Today they will usually go to the movies in the afternoon, so I could do all the preparation. My son has even learned to sing “Mennyből az angyal” although he does not like singing.

Our meal for Christmas Eve followed the traditional Catholic practice of not eating meat even after this practice was changed. To this day, we only eat seafood on Christmas Eve. As a family tradition of serving “Forralt Bort” is still practiced although since my Mother is not here to spice it up we now buy a bottle of German spiced wine. Of course, we bake both the “Mákos beigli and the Dios beigli” and other Hungarian cookies and cakes.

My daughter has tried to keep a little of our Hungarian tradition in her family. Although Santa does come on Christmas morning in their home, but not before everyone is dressed. There is no one in their bathrobes or pajamas.

Christmas In July: The Hungarians in Viet-Nam

I was reassigned to Saigon from the American Embassy in Budapest in 1973 when Henry Kissinger's Paris Peace Treaty went into effect. Four nations, including Hungary, Indonesia, Poland and Canada formed the quadripartite International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS) to police the agreement. A number of Foreign Service Officers with previous Viet-Nam experience were assigned back to Viet-Nam for this purpose. Since I spoke Hungarian and had served in Viet-Nam, I was on the short list.

Our four-man unit in the Embassy each specialized in one of the four ICCS nations. Arriving in 95 degree heat from 25 degree Budapest in early February. It was exhausting for all concerned, not least for the Hungarian military in their inappropriate heavy wool uniforms.

The night of my arrival, I was in the elevator of the Majestic Hotel down by the Saigon River, a Claude Rains location if there ever was one, when the Hungarian military commander, Major General Ferenc Szucs entered the elevator with an aide. A portly man who was clearly very uncomfortable, he proceeded to let fly some expressive oaths in earthy colloquial Hungarian about precisely what he thought about the weather, those who had sent him there, Viet-Nam, the food, the mosquitoes, and life in general. Here was a quandry, since I was going to pay an official call on him the following afternoon. I hadn't met the man yet, and I didn't want to start off our working relationship with the suspicion that I had eavesdropped on his conversation.

What to do. Before I got off the elevator, I turned and said to him in Hungarian "My sentiments exactly, General. I look forward to our meeting tomorrow afternoon." I introduced myself, and left the elevator. Then in the surreal Saigon world I went to my room, dropped off immediately to sleep, and woke up at two o'clock. There was just enough time to make my meeting with General Szucs, so I raced out of bed, dressed, and flew down stairs to the lobby, only to discover that my internal clock was still running on Budapest time. It was indeed two o'clock ... in the morning.

To monitor the peacekeeping machinery, a 4-man unit was set up in the Embassy. Then, we had to establish four regional centers, and twenty-three sub-centers, for the four-nation ICCS throughout Viet-Nam, and we had to do it at the very time when our military effort was, of course, drawing down. With the help of a resourceful American Major General named Jim Fairfield who was assigned to help our little unit, we did it.

As I look back on it, we can well compare this strenuous period, when we had to put together a working military observer peace agreement throughout South Viet-Nam, with more recent peacekeeping efforts. The lessons learned are still valid, although it seems to me that they have to be relearned each time.

The euphoria of being there, in the news and on the spot, didn't last long, and soon the Hungarians and the Polish contingent had their orders to be unhelpful. That cut into their sense of military professionalism, as the ICCS produced reports which were painful to read. But there were various subplots to enliven the situation. Once I heard about an ICCS jeep which had come under fire. The Hungarian major said, “That’s the first Russian ordnance I’ve heard since 1956!” And an invitation soon came to share paprikas csirke galuskaval, which an enterprising Hungarian sergeant with a rare talent for cooking had made from scratch in Saigon!

But this Viet-Nam experience remained by and large a sad reminder that the Hungarians were in check, unable to complete their mission in a professional way. One incident, though, confirmed for me that their sympathies were elsewhere.

It concerned the An Loc Orphanage near Saigon. I had visited this orphanage for young girls from time to time during my first Viet-Nam diplomatic tour, as part of my consular duties, which included numerous adoption cases. As American Consul, I would be asked to go to the orphanage to be sure that the child concerned was healthy, before the visa was finally approved. After the third or fourth visit, as the father of two girls, I noticed that each time I visited with a child, she seemed to be wearing the same white dress. And so I asked the supervisor, who admitted that was the case. They only had one nice dress, and that was used for a child when visitors came, to increase the prospects that the orphan would be taken into a new family.

And so my last visit before flying out of Saigon in 1973 was to the An Loc Orphanage. My letters to my wife, and memories of the orphanage from my previous assignment, had produced some practical help. She had organized the diplomatic colony in Budapest, and had assembled a generous shipment of new clothing for the orphan children. But how could it be delivered, half a world away?

Lois was astonished to receive a telephone call from the the Hungarian Foreign Ministry. And then the Hungarian military ICCS contingent, always very resourceful and decent when they were given half the chance, flew the shipment over as free cargo on a troop replacement flight. It was Christmas in July for the orphanage.

I like to think that action more truly reflected their generous nature as Hungarians rather than did the official Russian communist ideology, which they hated virtually to a man. They will now be staunch NATO allies, with greater belief in their mission.

Two years ago, several members of the Hungarian Meetup group in Atlanta, GA helped clean up the local Budapest cemetery in "Budapest," GA. The cemetery contains a number of grave markers from the the turn of the century. The story of the now defunct town of Budapest, GA is below...but the good news is that we are currently working with the Haralson County Historical Society to clean up the cemetery, replace some of the vandalized markers and even rename the street where the cemetery is located. Read the rest of the history by clicking on the link below...

http://thegulyaspot.com/site/?q=node/26

" …In the late 1880s, Georgia encountered a new ethnic group, the Hungarians, who came at the invitation of Ralph L. Spencer, a Connecticut-born gentleman that contributed greatly to the development of West Georgia by organizing the Georgia Vineyard Company. He wanted to create extensive vineyards on the hills of Haralson county with the help of European emigrants who had considerable knowledge of winemaking. The Hungarians came from Pennsylvanian mines as their strong desire was to own land and engage in agriculture.

By the turn of the century approximately 200 families moved to the area where they named their settlement Budapest after the Hungarian capital. The later established villages received their names Tokaj( famous vineyard village) and Nyitra (Slovakian settlement). The Hungarian colonies flourished as the new industry provided them with a decent living, and Spencer even invited a Catholic priest to serve the communities in their spiritual needs as the people of Budapest, GA, built their own church, school and rectory.

As were other close-knit ethnic communities, the Hungarians were reluctant to learn English which triggered some animosity toward them by Southerners. Without the means of communication by common language Hungarians were looked down upon since Americans perceived prejudicial ideas about Hungarians as their lifestyle, eating habits were different from those of the Georgians. Still the new colony was booming until the Prohibition Act in Georgia in 1908 caused the downfall of winemaking in the South. Losing their livelihood, many Hungarians moved back North to the mines, leaving back the life that reminded them of their homeland.

Thanks to the Georgia Historical Society, a historical marker was erected close to the original settlement…standing on the junction of Budapest Spur and Hwy 78…"

NOTE: This marker was recently vandalized, but the HCGA is in discussions with the county about how to go about refurbishing the marker and the tombstones in the graveyard.

Information quoted from a paper entitled, "Hungarian colony in Haralson county, Georgia," written by Emese Vas.

Varga Istvan and Varga Katalin; edes Apam es edes Anyam; my brave and bold parents who participated very actively in the 1956 Hungarian uprising. My brave and bold parents, who, because of this participation, had to flee for their lives when Hungary’s revolt against Soviet rule ended so badly. As the Soviet tanks rumbled back into Budapest, my parents stood in my grandmother’s kitchen and endured a final loving tongue lashing. By then, they had stopped feeling quite so brave and bold. My grandmother was angry that they had put themselves in danger for nothing. She was angry that they had to leave Hungary or face arrest. She was very angry that my mother was four months pregnant with me and had put two lives in harm’s way. A cold November night was falling and where the hell were they to go? My parents did not know. They kissed my grandmother goodbye, and left. They had nothing but the clothes they were wearing, my mother’s revolutionary committee identification card folded and sewn inside the finger of one of her gloves, and me, witness to history in vitro. In the dark city around my parents, many others were also preparing to leave their kin, their homes and homeland.

The Crossing the Danube in a Leaky Stolen Rowboat (while Soviet bullets whizzed all around them!)story; The Five Day Walk to Vienna (cold, hungry, and so very tired and terrified!) story; The Sorrow We Felt when We Realized We Could Never Go Home Again (Dad had to carry our weeping pregnant mother onto the evacuation plane to America!)story: my sisters and I would listen raptly as Mom and Dad often told us these and all the other stories of How They Came to America. To us, our parents’ stories were the foundation on which our lives were built.

My favorite story was The First Christmas in America. I have shared it many times, and it has never become word worn and dull. My mother and father, and of course, me, still in Mom’s tummy, were adopted by a small town in upstate New York where they had been settled as political refugees. Dad got a job as an engineer at a small logging company. Mom became a homemaker. They did not speak a dot of English, and I am sure that their day to day routine was difficult as they learned to adapt to new faces, new customs. They were also coming to grips with the realization that it would be years before they would see loved ones and their homeland again. There were some people in this town who spoke a little Hungarian because they were descendants of Hungarian immigrants. They were our parents’ only social contacts in those first months. Through these people, a local family extended an invitation for Mom and Dad to spend Christmas Day with them. Even though this family did not speak Hungarian, they still wanted to make sure that Mom and Dad would not be alone on their first Christmas in America.

When Mom and Dad arrived at this family’s home, they were warmly welcomed. Mom told us that they could only speak to each other “Kezel Labbal”, with hands and feet, having no common tongue. Nevertheless, there was a turkey on the table and gifts for Mom and Dad under the big Christmas tree. My parents were made to feel as if they were a part of their family. It was not until good-byes were being said in the hallway that Mom noticed, on a little table under the stairs, a Menorah. And my mother realized that this lovely family was Jewish and had created a christian Christmas Day just for them, strangers in a strange land, so Mom and Dad would feel loved and not quite so alone.

The gift of friendship that was given to my Mom and Dad on their First Christmas Day is an affirmation and reminder of the true sprit of the holiday. America did not seem as overwhelmingly strange to Mom and Dad. It made them feel like a welcome addition to the American immigrant melting pot.

Eniko Varga
Reno, NV

“I’m dreaming of a white Chritmas,
Just like the ones I used to know…”

It is true what they say about our memories as we age. We remember the long ago better than the now. I especially remember the beautiful Christmases of my childhood.

I grew up in a small town in Europe. My family was not wealthy in the material sense, but where love of family was concerned we were very rich. Our winters were hard, and snow was never in small supply. Living in close proximity to the Danube, the humid winter air was bone chilling. The snow squeaked under our feet, and our noses stuck together. Every child acquired the skill of snowman building and snowball fights were honed to a fine art. Snow days at school were unheard of, unless you had to travel to another town that was too far for walking and the trains got stuck. This happened infrequently, but when it did celebrations were in order and we were in for a day of hard sledding. Our parents bundled us up in plenty of warm clothes, most of which we would shed as soon as we were out of sight of our mother.

Early in December the excitement of what was to come started to stir in our souls. Every chimney in town was spewing fragrant smoke that competed with our foggy breaths. Chestnut vendors on street corners filled brown paper bags with their delicacies that kept our fingers deliciously warm. The one grocery store in town stocked up on shoe polish before the 5th of December, because on that night all the kids would feverishly shine the only pair of shoe they had so as not to be embarrassed by the visiting Saint Nicholas. Before we would retire for the night, we would unlatched the window and carefully place our spotless shoes on the windowsill hoping to find it filled next morning with sweets that we have not seen since last Saint Nicholas Day - oranges, figs, almonds, a candy bar. Some of us lucky kids were even visited by Santa Claus. He usually came knocking on the door at night, and we had to fess up to him our past misdemeanors, promising to be good from then on.

Outdoor holiday decorations were unheard of back then. Celebrations were mostly observed indoors and in our hearts. Baking began in earnest after St Nicholas day and our home never smelled so good. The freshly cut Christmas tree was not assembled until the evening of the 24th. I had to go to bed early and try to fall a sleep, which I usually did, for I was worn out from the excitement. Innocently I dreamed of the angels who would bring the tree and leave a present under it. My mind never questioned how angels could fly with all those trees and gifts, not to mention bring it into our house without any of us hearing them.

Once my parents were convinced that I drifted into dreamland, they then set to work at a feverish pace decorating the tree my father’s friend cut that afternoon and delivered to our house under the cover of darkness. It was always a Douglas fir, because it’s branches were made for hanging ornaments, and its refreshing pine scent was intoxicating. We had very few store-bought decorations. They were expensive and you had to travel to a larger town than ours to find them. But this was never a problem. My mom’s specially prepared candy in fancy wrappers paired with cookies with holes in their middle, white tissue paper snowballs, gilded walnuts, apples that were preserved from the summer in the attic were more than enough to dress up the little evergreen. Then, just after the candles were lit on the tree, my father would tap a fork on a glass that sounded like a bell an angel would ring, and I would wake to this wondrous sight. My parents hid behind the door and after I made the beautiful discovery, they would also join me, yawning and rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, as if they were also just woken up by the bell. The soft gleam from the candles reflected in our eyes and slowed our breaths. The room was aglow and deliciously warm not only from the candles but also from the love we felt for each other. The few unwrapped presents that were left behind by the angels were maybe a book, perhaps a doll, and possibly a warm scarf. I never had a lot of presents, but what ever I received I’m sure was more than my parents could afford.

While beautiful Christmas music played on the radio my father would grab his camera to preserve these moments forever. When the evening turned into night we bundled up in our warmest winter garb and hurried to the old, hillside church for midnight mass, where we sang our hearts out. After the short service to standing room only we hugged our neighbors and passed out kisses to all our relatives as the bells tolled. On the way home our footsteps were muffled by the softly falling snow that made this evening truly magical and forever lasting in our memories.