I haven’t done this in years. Decades, if school projects don’t count. Needle in one hand, I try to remember how. My first few stitches don’t land right. My flower looks less like a bloom, more like a blob.
Beside me, a white-haired woman with bright cheeks and the calm authority of someone who has fixed many things in life watches for a moment. She gently takes the hoop from my hands, unpicks a few stitches, and begins again. Her fingers move fast. “I’ve done this since I was a girl,” says Maria Hajdue, smiling. “All of us have.”
We are in the workshop of Matyodesign in Tard, a village of around 1,000 people in northeastern Hungary. Here, embroidery isn’t just a hobby; it is an amalgam of memory, skill, income and identity. Around the room, I see bursts of colour—roses in scarlet and coral, leaves in emerald, petals edged in cobalt and gold.
Miklós Vajda, affectionately called Neni, is bent over her own work. At 69, she is one of around 45 women who embroider for the workshop, and her hands barely pause as she speaks. “It quietens the mind; you rest while working,” she says, adding that she usually embroiders after spending hours hoeing her garden.
There is a story people tell here. The devil once kidnapped a villager and demanded ransom: the most colourful flowers in the world. It was winter, and the ground was frozen. The captive man’s desperate wife took needle and thread and stitched tulips, peonies, and roses in bright reds and blues. The devil was forced to admit defeat when presented with this handmade garden.
Folklore or fact, this explains something about Tard: people here fight back with skills when faced with scarcity.
Located in the foothills of the Bükk mountains, Tard is part of the Matyó embroidery region along with Mezőkövesd and Szentistván. One of Hungary’s most recognisable textile traditions developed in this landscape of open fields, limestone caves, and villages.
Garments here, be it blouses, aprons, shawls, or wedding clothes, have always been bright with floral motifs. The most famous design is the Matyó rose, a large, loose blossom, often red, ringed by smaller flowers and leaves. Most patterns are outlined in dark thread, allowing the colours to pop against black or white cloth.
Neni says colour carries memory and meaning in Matyó culture. Black evokes the earth and harvest; red, joy; yellow, the warmth and creative force of the sun; and blue stands for sadness and transience. Green entered the Matyó lexicon after World War I as a colour of mourning.
“In Hungary, every girl once learned embroidery,” says artisan Nagy Terézia. “Whether she lived in a castle or a peasant hut, it was part of growing up.”
But like many rural places across eastern Europe, Tard changed in the 20th century. The communist era led villagers to collective farms or to factories, mines, and metal plants. Later, depopulation, ageing communities, and fewer jobs affected life and local traditions.
Váczi Rozi, founder of Matyodesign, grew up moving between city life and village life. She saw what many had stopped seeing: extraordinary skill hidden in plain sight
“After post-partum depression, I came home and returned to embroidery,” she tells me. “It has always been part of everyday life. But I saw these beautiful patterns and colours only on pillowcases and wall hangings. I wanted to make Matyó modern again, keeping old patterns, but using new colours.”
In 2010, she started the company with her old nanny, her sister, and her cousin. “These women had knowledge no one was valuing,” she says. “I wanted to create work for people who could not leave the village, women caring for children, looking after family, women whose lives were tied to home. Why should that mean no income?”
Rozi started her business from a small house on a quiet street in Tard. Today, that address sends embroidered pieces to customers far beyond Hungary. Her idea was to bring Matyó embroidery out from the past and into the present. “We use it on T-shirts, coats, tops, bags, table linen, and pieces for the home,” Váczi says. “If craft only belongs in museums, it dies. People must wear it, live with it, choose it now.”
Around the workshop I see what she means. A T-shirt with a bright bloom at the shoulder. A dark coat whose cuff erupts in flowers. And so many colourful cushion covers, runners, and contemporary pieces.
Even Budapest’s grand hotels have begun to include these local stories into the travel experience. The Anantara New York Palace, housed in one of the capital’s belle époque landmarks, offers excursions to Tard where guests meet artisans, learn basic stitches, walk through the village, and enjoy homemade goulash.
“We wanted guests to experience Hungary not only through monuments and museums, but through living traditions,” says Gábor Földes, director of PR and marketing at Anantara New York Palace Budapest. “The hands-on Matyó workshop is ideal as travellers now want to meet the people behind a skill and take home something they have created.”
Thoughtful immersive tourism can be a bridge between luxury travel and local culture. That said, the real preservation of Matyó embroidery is not in UNESCO lists (it was added to the Intangible Cultural Heritage register in 2012), hotel itineraries, or design magazines.
It is here, in the room where women are hard at work, embroidering motifs and patterns that their grandmothers once did.
When I ask Neni whether young people are interested today, she shrugs in that universal manner that means yes, no, maybe, life is complicated. “Some are,” she says. “If they see it has value.”
I look at my once-mangled flower as I leave. The stitches have been redone, steadied by more practised hands, but it is still mine. Only far better than anything I could have managed alone. Much like Tard itself.