Polissya is an ethnic region that covers a wide, almost 100-kilometer strip in northern Ukraine. It includes modern-day Rivne, Volyn, Zhytomyr regions, and the northern parts of Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kyiv regions.
Polissya has long attracted attention with its originality, because this region, due to its natural conditions, dense forests and impassable swamps, was cut off from the centers of industrial, trade and cultural development for a long time. Thanks to this, its inhabitants were able to more accurately preserve folk arts, beliefs, traditions, elements of everyday life and culture that have developed in this territory since time immemorial. Polissya is not in vain considered the ancestral homeland and cradle of the Slavs.
Features of Polishchuk embroidery
Polesie embroideries are distinguished by their simplicity, but at the same time by their sophistication, miniature, wealth of variations and clarity of composition. The restraint of lines and geometric motifs, the lack of detail in ornaments and the small number of techniques are brought to life by the use of red threads, which gives the works brightness and emotionality.
The most traditional here is geometric embroidery, which is one of the oldest in human history and is found in patterns of ornaments from different eras and on all continents. And these are not just abstract drawings, they have a very deep symbolic and magical meaning.
Symbolic plant and flower ornaments are also often found in embroidery (periwinkle, symbolizing memory, viburnum - a girlish symbol, a tree as a symbol of the family, oak leaves as a sign of male strength, grapes as a symbol of goodness, and others). Embroidery was not entirely naturalistic, rather it was a kind of stylization. One of the favorite motifs, especially when embroidering towels, were birds, which were sewn mainly in pairs.
Polissya embroidered products often feature images of a rosette with four, six, or eight ends – a symbol that refers to the earth and sky, indicating the infinity of life.
Polissya embroidery was done on white-gray linen or hemp homespun fabrics, mostly in red and black colors.
In the Rivne and Volyn regions, simple straight and broken lines, rhombuses, and octagonal stars were sewn, which were repeated one after another several times. They usually used “understood”, clearly embroidered lines, which made the products look like patterned weaving. Plant ornaments (grapes, thorns) were also popular. The main color of the embroidery of this region was red, to which black or blue were sometimes added.
In some areas of Volyn, embroidery is distinguished by diamond patterns that fit into rectangles. Such ornaments were made alternately with red and blue threads.
In the Rivne region, there were also differences - there was embroidery with smoothness, "gathering" and "cutting", which was done in white.
In the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions, traditional geometric motifs were successfully combined with plant motifs (birches, thorns, grapes, periwinkle, hops, goosefoot, etc.). In addition to “zanyazuvannya”, various openwork patterns were also made here. Towels were embroidered with horizontal stripes using “plating”, “zanyazuvannya” and “vyrezuvaniya”. Red embroidery is also characteristic of this region, but white embroidery is also found here in combination with openwork netting and “vyrezuvaniya”.
The uniqueness of Polesie embroidery
For a long time, people considered a shirt a symbol of the soul of the person to whom it belonged, its double. Therefore, each ornament embroidered on it had a special meaning, making it a talisman for its owner.
Shirts for women in Polesie were sewn from high-quality, slightly, but not completely, bleached linen, which became softer and silkier with each wash. Sometimes shirts were made "with a base", combining two types of fabric in one product (thinner on top and coarser on the bottom). When sewing, usually, two wide cloths of fabric were combined, with whole sleeves or using inserts. Shirts were densely gathered at the neck and had a standing collar in everyday clothes and a folded collar in festive clothes, and the sleeves were sewn into wide sleeves. The length of the shirt reached mid-calf.
Women's shirts were embroidered mainly with red ornaments, sometimes with black added. They were embroidered by "piercing" or "dragging", in a technique very similar to weaving, as well as by "laying" or "cutting".
Embroidery on the shirt was placed depending on the region. Embroidery on the front of the shirt and on the sleeves was characteristic of Northern Polissya. In the Western part of Polissya, embroidery only on the sleeves with geometric rhythmic patterns was more common. In Volhynia, the shirt was “threaded” along the entire length, and sometimes the inserts and partially the sleeves were also embroidered. In Chernihiv region, an openwork element was used, which connected, with the help of a hem, both parts of the shirt (“Chernihiv embroidery”).
Men's shirts were made of coarser cloth, long, to the knee, and had wedges sewn on the sides. Everyday shirts did not have a collar, and festive shirts had a folded or standing collar. The sleeves were either straight or gathered into sleeves, densely gathered. Men's shirts were embroidered by "stitching" on the collar, sleeves, and hem. Later, shirts were supplemented with an embroidered manishka.
How embroidery changed in Polissya
Time does not stand still, so at the end of the 19th century, changes also occurred in traditional folk Polissya embroidery. It all started with the borrowing of the cross-stitch technique. This introduced new plant motifs into embroidered products and gradually began to displace old techniques, colors, and patterns. At first, all kinds of flowers (roses, lilies, dahlias) appeared in the usual red-black colors, but over time, the craftsmen almost completely departed from the original sources. Embroidered products acquired a more decorative appearance, became more diverse and natural. The main thing was no longer the symbols carried through the centuries, but the creative imagination of the craftsmen.
In the Kyiv region, large ornaments are common, completely covering towels and women's and even men's shirts. The Chernihiv region is distinguished by horizontal stripes, which become larger closer to the edges of the towels.
A "deceptive net" appears, which looks like openwork, but only the background of the pattern is embroidered, and the pattern itself remains white, which makes it light and filigree.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Polesie embroiderers mastered the "drawn" technique, which was similar to smooth embroidery. Individual elements of the ornament were sewn entirely with red threads and framed with black, which made the pattern clearer and more expressive. Such work required special skills and taste from the craftsmen.
Despite all the new trends and fashion fads, and the complex evolution that Podolsk embroidery has undergone over the millennia, the love of the Polishchuk people for their culture and age-old traditions is boundless. They carefully preserve and cherish their historical heritage, an integral part of which is the ancient art of embroidery, because it encodes the powerful spirit of the Ukrainian people, from the Drevlyans to the present day.
Don't forget that you can buy Ukrainian embroidered shirts in our store. You can buy embroidered shirts in Kyiv , as well as in any other city in our country.
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