Nela Szabóová
The story of the embroidery club Izabella begins in 1888 when two embroidered dolls owned by a post director Maria Hollosy were delivered directly to the Queen Elisabeth (Sissi) by a countess from Cifer village. A few years later there was an embroidery school founded in Cifer, and it was led by the same Mrs. Hollosy. After a short time, it turned into a Women’s club supporting the local embroidery craft in Pressburg and the surrounding area, later known simply as Club Izabella. The Club was named after its initiator a Belgian arch countess Isabella Habsburg. Based on the model of the school in Cifer, other institutes were founded in western Slovakia later and they united local talented embroiders. The club used a system of financing worth mentioning – it used the best quality local and foreign materials and the work itself was of extremely high quality, too. Also, the marketing side was unique for those days – they used catalogues that offered services in all languages and thus the goods and works travelled around the whole world.