(source: TASR)
THE 24th year of the Koliesko folk culture festival saw two makers of traditional Slovak garments land spots in the Slovak Book of Records, for the biggest pair of trousers and the biggest pair of krpce – traditional leather peasant shoes.
The trousers were made by Rozália Murínová, aged 71, modelled after the traditional canvas garment worn by her parents, and were 154 centimetres long with a 182-centimetre waist.
She told the TASR newswire that she has been making the canvas used for the trousers herself for more than a year.
“But I then sewed the trousers on a sewing machine in a single evening,” she said, adding that four men could fit inside the trousers. “But one huge man used to live in Kokava until recently who could fit in the garment,” Murínová said.
The krpce were made from cowhide, at 38 centimetres in length, by 59-year-old Ľubomír Medveď from Čierny Balog.
“This means a normal size of 18 or 60,” head of the Slovak Book of Records, Igor Svítok, told TASR.
It took Medveď one and a half days to prepare the hide for these shoes and to make them. “But we could hardly find anyone here at Koliesko whom they could fit,” the shoemaker noted.
In addition to these record-making feats, the festival, which took place in July and early August this year in Kokava nad Rimavicou in central Slovakia’s Poltár district, included a workshop for ethnographers and folklore enthusiasts, as well as displays of traditional skills, like making beehives, wooden barrels, baskets, leather products, metal tools and more.
