"Love at first sight", that is how Helene Cincebeaux describes the first contact with her heritage through traditional folk dress. For the next 50 years, Helene Cincebeaux and her mother, Helen Zemek Baine, spent five decades visiting villages in Slovakia, Moravia, and Bohemia. They were invited into homes to see beautiful hand decorated textiles as well as hear fascinating stories, memories, and legends behind the pieces. The treasures they found on these trips led to the Baine/Cincebeaux Collection of Slovak Folk Dress & Folk Art. The Collection has more than 5,000 pieces and has been exhibited all over the United States and the world. In the following feature, we spend time exploring where this love of tradition has taken Helene.
Helene Cincebeaux
Máte problém s prehrávaním? Nahláste nám chybu v prehrávači.
"The event that began my love of kroj - dressed as a bride in my ancestral village of Ratíškovice, Moravian Slovakia on my first visit to the "old country" in 1969."
Helene dancing with her son Chris at the Slovak Festival in New Jersey in 1976.
Helene Cincebeaux giving a talk on traditional Slovak wear
at the Slovak embassy in Washington, D.C.
(Photo courtesy: Slovak Embassy in USA)
Zuzana Botiková; archive of Helene Cincebeaux
