The whole workforce of the royal Hungarian silk filature stands drawn up in the factory yard, ranked several deep across the width of the picture. Almost all are women and girls in white aprons and headscarves, and a large number of them are plainly children. Brick workshop ranges close the yard behind, with a loading door at the left and a long window wall running back on the right. The mills of the state silk programme employed women and girls throughout, and a hostel for those who came into Novi Sad from outside the town opened in 1914.
Published by Josef Singer
About this place
The Royal Hungarian silk filature at Novi Sad was one of a chain of mills built under the state silk programme that Pál Bezerédj ran from 1880, alongside works at Pančevo, Tolna, Győr, Komárom, Novi Kneževac, Mohács, Békéscsaba and Lugoj. The programme lifted the country's annual cocoon crop from a few tonnes to two thousand, and by 1905 Hungary stood third in Europe for silk after Italy and France. The mills employed women and girls, and the postcard here shows the whole workforce of the Novi Sad house drawn up in the yard in headscarves and aprons; a hostel for those who came from outside the town was opened in Novi Sad in 1914. Silk settled in the Almaš quarter of Podbara, where the works were known as the Svilara and the dye house was reckoned the largest silk factory in Hungary. The trade lasted in the quarter into the 1970s, tall blocks of flats went up on the factory ground in the 1960s, and one surviving building now serves as a cultural centre.
On the card
Magy. kir. selyemfonoda. / Ujvidék. / Singer József udv. fényképész kiadása.
Royal Hungarian silk spinning mill. / Ujvidék (Novi Sad). / Published by József Singer, court photographer.
- Date
- 1900–1908
- Coordinates
- 45.26256, 19.84965
- Source
- Public online source
- Licence
- Public domain
- Size
- 1158 × 902 px
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