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Kónya Gyuláné Schéfer Teréz
Kónya Gyuláné Schéfer Teréz (born Schéfer Teréz)   (1884 - 1971) raised interest in Kalotaszeg peasant embroidery between the two World Wars in the predominantly Hungarian Transylvanian ethnographic region in Romania, Kalotaszeg. In the interwar period she was the Hungarian Reformed church pastor's wife in Văleni/Magyarvalkó and collected old Kalotaszeg peasant embroidery patterns. She also created new patterns based on the motifs found on other folk art items such as carved gates, and the painted panels and carvings in churches.

The village of Văleni lies 3 kilometres from the village where Gyarmathy Zsigáné Hory Etelka (1843–1910) was born. Kónya Gyuláné Schéfer Teréz can be seen as continuing Gyarmathy Zsigáné’s work popularising the local embroidery.

Early life
Schéfer Teréz was born into a middle class family in Cluj-Napoca (Hungarian Kolozsvár) at the end of the Austro Hungarian empire. She was the second eldest child of six. Her father, Schéfer András (1854–1904), was a Hungarian tailor born in Mezőberény who, searching for work, moved to the eastern part of the empire and opened a tailor shop in Kolozsvár. In the 1870s he applied machine embroidery techniques to the peasant man’s szűr or mantle for the first time, thus creating the distinctive Kolozsvár szűr. His craft received international recognition when it was awarded a medal at the Brussels International Exposition of 1897. As the demand for his szűr continued to grow, he would travel to the weekly market in Huedin (Hungarian Bánffyhunyad) to sell them and maybe pick up Kalotaszeg traditional sewing for his wife's growing collection.

Education and early work
The Schéfer family paid attention to the education of their children. Schéfer Teréz graduated from the Women’s National Teacher Training College in 1904, where she was part of a self study circle and her classes included handicraft and drawing. In 1907 she became the first female teacher at the Reformed Church College primary school where she was a great success. She left her post in 1908 when she became engaged to Kónya Gyula, a trainee minister in the town of Cojocna (Hungarian Kolozs).

Cojocna/Kolozs (1909-1921) In 1909, she married and joined her husband in his first ministry in the village of Cojocna (Hungarian Kolozs), close to Cluj. They soon established a Sunday school, focussing not only on religious education but also more practical and creative activities. Kónyáné's interest in embroidery was soon apparent. In 1910 the church received the first donation in the name of Kónya Gyula, a small cloth of filet lace donated by Kónyáné and used to decorate the centre of a table. It is still in the parish collection today .

In 1911, Kónyáné was instrumental in forming the church women’s guild which immediately started raising money for a new communion table. During World War I, the Kolozs Women’s Guild set out to help soldiers by sewing underwear and hand warmers to be delivered to those serving at the Front.

Life and work in Văleni/Magyarvalkó
In 1921, Kónya Gyula resigned from his position in Kolozs and took over the ministry in the parish church in Văleni (Hungarian Magyarvalkó) on the southern most fringes of Kalotaszeg. Magyarvalkó is one of the five most representative centres of Kalotaszeg open chain stitch/nagyírásos embroidery. After settling in, the Kónyas formed relationships with many of the leading figures in post-war Hungarian society, including architect and politician Kós Károly, politician Albrecht Lajos and his wife, Bónis Irén, Bishop Ravasz László and his wife Bartók Margit and mayor and town planner Bernády György. Bónis Irén, Bartók Margit and Bernády György provided Kónyáné with old embroidery patterns from their collections to copy.

Kónyáné took an active interest in the interior decoration of the old Magyarvalkó church. In 1923, she designed her first piece of Hardanger (Hungarian vagdalásos) whitework embroidery, a cloth to wrap around and decorate the pulpit. For this first purpose-made piece of Kalotaszeg sewing donated to the church, she donated the thread and homespun cotton fabric and the Whitsun confirmation group for that year organised the sewing and made the gift.

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From this time she was instrumental in planning Hardanger sewing for confirmation groups to donate to the church, along with occasional pieces sewn to commemorate births and deaths.

Organising the embroidery cottage industry
Kónyáné worked with Albrecht Lajosné Bónis Irén in the Transylvanian Reformed Women’s Guild from at least 1924, providing employment for the women in Kalotaszeg villages. Around the same time, in Magyarvalkó, she started organising the cottage industry, and forming a network of potential buyers for the peasant embroidery. She called on her customers to act conscientiously, and be prepared to pay more, ‘as this is the only way to ensure the right quality’.

Kónyáné sourced the vintage homespun hemp fabric locally and bought the cotton thread in bulk. For the nagyírásos patterns she made large stencils cut from cardboard. She had a team of three in the village. They soon developed a network of women in the surrounding villages who collected the loose Hardanger paper patterns, the cloth, and sufficient thread from the manse and who embroidered and benefited from this work.

Beside organising the production and selling of peasant embroidery, Kónyané also paid attention to the needs of the buyers: she made new designs reusing old patterns, elements and motifs. By doing this, she was able to fuse the old and traditional with the modern: designing for bags of varying shapes and size, shoes and belts.

Kónyáné ensured that local work was prominent across Hungary and Romania by attending exhibitions and obtained orders from prominent figures.

Fairs and exhibitions popularising Kalotaszeg sewing
By the late 1920s, folk art exhibitions were being organised more frequently by the church guilds across Transylvania, in neighbouring Hungary and a little further afield.

In 1927 she was able to present her work abroad: among the exhibits at a Transylvania folk art exhibition in Berlin sewing was sent from Văleni. The main promoter of the exhibition was Bethlen Györgyné Josika Paula  leader of the Transylvanian Catholic Women’s Guild who declared the reputation of Kónya Gyuláné guaranteed that the ‘most beautiful costumes in Kalotaszeg’ would be present at the exhibition.

Between 1930 and 1937 Bethlen Mária (1882–1970), president of the Reformed Women’s Guild in Turda took craft, including that produced by Kónyáné’s women, to 22 places with the International Travelling Exhibition. By 1932 she had successfully sold one million lei worth of goods, despite the economic crisis, thanks to the strength of support from patriotic Romanians and Hungarians. In 1934 Bethlen Mária ordered 1,000 pieces of embroidery from Kónyáné for exhibitions in Bucharest and Szolnok. They sold well. The exhibitions attracted the attention of Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga; leading feminist political activist Alexandrina Cantecuzino, and leaders of various church denominations, who all shared the common aim to preserve historic patterns and provide an income for struggling villagers.

In the 1930s, Kónyáné, independently, started to regularly participate in smaller exhibitions dressed in local Magyarvalkó peasant costume. The December 1930 issue of Ellenzék newspaper describes how she dressed the window of the photography shop managed by her brother on the main square in Cluj with peasant sewing. The display was highly visible and successful.

Until 1938, she was a regular at the exhibitions of the Transylvanian Economic Association, the umbrella organisation of the ÁGISZ Cooperative (General Economic and Industrial Cooperative) and Pitvar Cooperative. Numerous certificates bear witness to her participation. Everywhere she went, the material displayed was awarded a diploma of excellence.

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Kónyáné knew the best promotion was to obtain orders from those most in the public eye. People from Magyarvalkó remember stories such as how at one of the Budapest Trade fairs that Kónyáné attended, she proudly secured a large commission for thirty cushions from Horthy Miklós (Regent of Hungary 1921–44) to grace his summer house. In autumn 1932, she went one better when King Carol II (King of Romania 1930–40) placed an order at the large Transylvanian Economic Association exhibition in Cluj.

Patterns collections
From 1928 onwards Kónyáné began to gather and organise patterns into collections. In total five pattern collections were made. Three for the open chain/nagyírásos and two for the hardanger. The earliest nagyírásos collection dated 1928 is two part and made up of older patterns gathered from women in the village and other early sources. Her second nagyírásos collection works up these earlier sourced patterns to use for making certain items popular at that time such as pillow cases and tablecloths. The third collection, organised during World War II, contains  her own nagyírásos creations for modern items at the time such as tea cosies, curtains, place mats  etc.

The hardanger  collection with patterns created and used during the 1920s and 1930s is divided into two volumes.

All the pattern collections are currently held in private ownership.

The War Years
From 1940, and during the isolation of the war years, Kónyáné redrew and organised many embroidery patterns into albums. In 1940 the Second Vienna Award saw Northern Transylvania returned to Hungary, leaving Valeni stranded in Romanian territory. As the war continued and the fighting got nearer, the house was repeatedly searched and she became increasingly concerned about the safety of her patterns so in the afternoon of 14th November 1943, Kónyáné and her right hand woman in the village, Pituj Erzsébet hid all the pattern albums,  loose Kalotaszeg sewing patterns and sewing collections – a total of 8 sacks and a trunk – in the church crypt in the area below the pulpit steps. In her diary, she describes how they ‘also put a wooden board under the bags so they would not touch the ground and left the result of twenty years’ work between the dusty skulls and bones.’  

In August 1944 her husband Kónya was taken by Romanian soldiers to Călăţele, a nearby village. His wife visited him with food parcels until he was moved to Beliș, about 40km away from Văleni and from there to Alba Iulia. Kónya Gyula was brought home on 20th October by Russian troops, but he was much weakened and in 1945 he died.

Shortly after Kónya was taken by soldiers his wife had brought her valued possession out of the crypt, only to hide them again in the cellar of the manse when on 6th September 1944, the news about the imminent arrival of the Romanian and Russian joint forces spread through the village. The war in Romania continued until 24 September when nearly all the country was under the control of Allied Forces.

Later years and death
When Kónyáné was widowed she had to leave the manse in Văleni. She returned to her birth place, Cluj, where she dedicated the rest of her life to Christian missionary work, working as director of the Reformed Church old people’s home. When the old people’s home closed down, she worked for the presbytery collecting religious taxes.

Kónyáné travelled regularly to Huedin Tuesday market to meet the villagers she had come to know best, mainly the women of Văleni, to whom she continued to give sewing commissions  In this way she could still make a difference to the lives of women whose husbands had been deported to Siberia and those widowed with families to feed following the war.

The 1950s brought laws which forbade pastors’ wives from any involvement in community work. This crackdown coincided with her hip becoming too painful to ignore. From 1958–71 she was bed bound and during this time she suffered a stroke. Her sister, Bözsi and adopted daughter, Rózsika nursed her until her death.

Legacy
Her lasting influence began to be noticed during the more relaxed communist regime of 1968–74, when minorities had more freedom to celebrate their traditions and heritage. Even beyond 1974, a series of pattern collections were made which included the Kalotaszegi nagyirasos. After the fall of the communist regime, new publications started to recognise the importance of Kónyáné’s work.

Kónyáné's talent, energy, warmth and determination led to Văleni becoming the centre for Kalotaszeg sewing in the years prior to WWII and paved the way for another pattern drawing woman or íróasszony to emerge. Vince Zsebe Kata Györgyné (Gyuricáné) (1886 – 1974) who preserved Kónya Gyuláné's patterns and, being a peasant woman with a real appreciation of folk art, went on to create beautiful patterns of her own. She devoted fifty years of her life to drawing patterns and was a great favourite with the visiting ethnographers of the time.