VERONIKA GOLIANOVÁ

May 25, 1914 - December 26, 1999  

Detva’s embroider, organizer of folk art manufacturing and folklore movement, collector.

Veronika Golianová, nee. Vidiečanová was born as the last child in family of seven siblings. She grew in very modest relations, but she got from her family value for beauty, aesthetics, and endurance, with which she was able to found and create beauty. Her mother used to do embroidery and weaving, but her father’s cousin, aunt Majdáková, introduced the real mystery of Detva’s embroidery to her. As nine-year-old girl she first embroiled a towel. For her first shoulder sleeve her mother had to sell a geese so she could buy for her the material for the embroidery called šifón.

She dedicated her whole life to Detva’s embroidery. In the sixties when the embroidery almost became forgotten, she “rediscovered” the jewel of the folk art in Detva. In 1966 she installed permanent exposition of Detva’s folk art after which in 1968 she followed with opening a shop with artifacts of folk art creations. In 1975, Veronika Golianová received award adn title as a Master of folk art creations. Her all life love for embroidery, activities in folklore movement in Detva and her passion collector’s activities put Veronika Golianová between the most important personalities of town and the whole region.
Her life’s journey ended on December 26, 1999. Her hands will never prick a needle through stretched cloth in a frame, but the remembrance of aunt Veronika will stay in the poetic beauty of her tablecloths, shirts, scarf's, sleeves, blankets...

Exposition “From the treasures of Veronika Golianová” wants to allow the visitor and permanently remind the love of this enthusiastic woman to the traditions of her birth place and her industriousness with which she would allow them to go to sleep. It is introducing part of her collection and her own works, that can’t be secret about her fantasy and wide hands of Veronika Golianová.

Published in the Slovak Heritage Live newsletter Volume 9, No.2, Summer 2001
Copyright © Vladimir Linder 2001 
3804 Yale Street, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5C 1P6
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