Farkas Márta

“I am like a crab. I open my arms, then close, and I grab what I can. Discarded objects are gathered, cabinet doors, chairs, and rocking chairs. Step by step their turn comes, I prepare a new insert or tapestry, made of felt. “ .“I am like a crab. I open my arms, then close, and I grab what I can. Discarded objects are gathered, cabinet doors, chairs, and rocking chairs. Step by step their turn comes, I prepare a new insert or tapestry, made of felt. “

It is her present craft. “ In the sixties, I learnt English man’s tailoring. But that time who needed a hard-sewn jacket in style of the forties? Or who had the patience to wait several months for a hand-sewn body? The mass-production at the “Vörös Október” Garment Factory needed not these finesses.”

“I rarely use my cutting skills. I usually find golden nuggets at second-hand garment shops for nothing. Good fair quality coats or cardigans made of brand-new fine wool need only to retailor a little, I felt onto it some fine details, and a special ’bespoke tailoring’ is ready.

We see densely felted fabrics in fresh and dim colours, and curvy wires coated with wool. The ambience is quite theatrical, because of the high podiums around, serving as storerooms. It would not surprise if from behind a large trunk of baronial decoration the royal castellan himself steps forward. For we are in the Buda Castle.

Several decades ago she had a circumstance that she accepted the job of caretaker in the house of the National Archives in this street. She thinks it was the most fortunate gift of her life. This palace is the headquarters of the Lectorate of Fine Arts, and the workshops of textile restoration and bookbinding are here as well. She could really gather a lot of practice in-house.

„You can felting everywhere. Summer in the yard, below the staircase, which resembles the Rialto bridge of Venice. In winter, on the big dining table. „

I start the upholstering with domestic wool, which is not the best quality. At the coloured parts it worns quickly. Just for this reason I do not want to ask any money for it. Even now I give these away, although the Australian wool is of high quality.

I prepare it because it is a lot of fun.

We observe with exciting the hat-racks, just as in the museum. She devotedly collects textiles of any sorts.

“At a clear-outs, a woman invited me to her house, when she saw me, mooning around the discarded textiles. Would she give me away an old chrisom robe? – she asked. There were a bodice and bonnet of Brussels lace. The old panties’ collections will surely interesting for the granddaughters.”

We got into a magic world. Sometimes it is like a dollhouse, sometimes as a palace. The lady of the house is decorating and gadgeteering, she built the stove herself. She sticks to the cooper boiler in the bathroom, for it she produces the paper briquettes herself. She is proud of the gas stove in the kitchen, made before 1917, and even in that time it had a dish warmer.

The tiny sewing room reveals the time, when woman was a lady, and a man was a gentleman.

8/9/2012 Budapest