Herdsmen have long used animal horns to make various tools, utensils and decorative objects. For added decorations, they carve geometric or floral ornamentations and colour them qellow with citric acid.

Many Roma people were specialized in this trade, travelling the countryside to repair equipment used in kitchens and bakeries.

Blue-dyeing is the art of pressing designs that resist colour onto white cotton printing blocks and immersing the fabric in an indigo bath until the cloth attain the desired shade of blue. Today, approximately, ten families in Hungary still practice blue-dyeing, but heir work reflects variations in colours and patterns based on geographic region and family traditions.

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The size, shape, form, decoration, and accessories of hats were one powerful indicators of occupation and social status in Hungary.

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Red and blue remain the most traditional colours in Hungarian folk weaving even though other colours have been added more recently. These textiles often feature stars, flowers, and birds, surrounded by geometrical designs typically with right angles.

Waving textiles has long played an important role in the economy of rural families. The various textiles shaped and patterned differently for significant events. For instance, red textiles were placed inside children’s cribs to ward off the evil eye.

Hungarian leatherworkers fashion leather into footwear, harnesses, and saddles. Horse wranglers use a lassso-like rope to seperate a horse from the herd. The most famous tool of the trade is the ’karikásostor’, a whip woven of leather strings.

Jewelry has long been an essential element in the traditional dress of Hungarian girls and women.

FOLK EMBROIDERY

The techniques and embroidery styles vary according to theri base material and yarn type. In the 18th 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; th ebest-known of these come from Kalocsa, Kalotaszeg and Mezőkövesd.