Bukovinian embroidery, which was previously often called "lyapanka" (due to the large number of flowers embroidered with smoothness), is now not only one of the most diverse in terms of styles and ornaments, but is also rightfully among the most popular embroidery styles throughout Ukraine.
Kyiv awards
Four years ago, the people of Chernivtsi brought back a bunch of awards from Kyiv, where the “Parade of Embroidery” solemnly celebrated the beginning of the third decade of our independence. Bukovyna shirts had no equal in two nominations – “men's embroidery” and “children's embroidery”, and in one more – as you might have guessed, “women's embroidery” – the people from the smallest region of our country won the audience award.
"We arrived there and among all the number of embroidered clothes, our embroidered clothes stood out with their beauty. When we walked in this procession, sang and danced, it was very difficult, but all those emotions hid all that difficulty," says one of the Bukovina participants of the flash mob that went from Maidan Nezalezhnosti to Spivochye Pole and covered 18 regions of Ukraine, Viktoriya Gatrych.
Using the example of the winning models, another participant of the 2012 Embroidered Walk, collector of antiquities Mykola Shkriblyak, talks about the ethnographic diversity of shirts within the Bukovina region: "The embroidered shirts were from different regions and represented different ethnographic features of our region, so that it would not be, for example, the case that women's, men's, and children's shirts were from the same region, so that they were different, and so it turned out: Sadygura, Hlybochchina, where there is the influence of Romanian culture, and Novoselichchina, where there are the features and influences of Bessarabian traditional ethnographic culture."
Another evidence of the trendiness of embroidery as such and Bukovyna embroidery in particular are the words of the frontman of the group "TIK", an ardent supporter and collector of the ethnic treasures of our people, Viktor Bronyuk: "... Today, our children also have many beautiful embroidery. When I visit different cities and festivals, I am happy to buy new interesting embroidery for myself and my family. In particular, my daughter Eva has a very beautiful old Bukovyna embroidery - embroidered with beads on self-woven canvas."
Beads as a business card of edge embroidery
In addition to their diversity and popularity, Bukovinian vyshyvanka can boast that they are the heaviest in Ukraine. The approximate weight of an average shirt from Chernivtsi is 10 kg. The reason for such impressive figures is the beads that are abundantly decorated with almost every Bukovinian vyshyvanka.
"All these beaded shirts are not considered traditional. Although we embroider a lot of them in Bukovina. However, there is more of a commercial component here.
Once upon a time, beads came to us from Austria, from Vienna. And when our merchants traveled abroad, they brought them here, it was a good hundred years ago. And we started by interspersing beads in the eye of old embroidered clothes, they put four dots, three, two. Because beads were very expensive, not everyone could afford them. It was later that people began to embroider with small beads. This is especially the case for traditional shirts in villages closer to Romania,” recalls experienced local embroiderer Dariya Stasyuk.
Bukovinian embroidery: what is it really like?
The process of making embroidery in Bukovina is approached very carefully, the “recipes” are passed down through different generations. Once upon a time, hemp and linen threads were used here, which were dyed with natural dyes. Different families had their own secrets in making such dyes: either from flowers, or leaves, or from the bark of plants. To make you understand how serious everything is, the Austrian (!) researcher of Bukovina embroidery E. Kolbenhayer was engaged in studying the colors of these dyes.
The color range of Bukovina shirts covers virtually the entire rainbow, and in some places even goes beyond it: burgundy, orange, yellow, green, blue, and black colors prevail here, with possible inclusions of purple, crimson, blue, and brown.
The height of the panels, densely covered with beaded ornaments in the most exquisite examples, is 14-20 cm. The ornaments themselves were small geometric motifs combined with geometric floral ornaments. The most popular were the world-famous "Tree of Life" and the classic Ukrainian women's embroidery "Berehynya". In some places you can find birds and winged horses.
To make the embroidery even more vivid and unique, certain elements were decorated with metallic gold and silver threads, which in Bukovina were called "hir." This process was performed using a different technique than the one used to decorate the entire shirt.
The border is a strip made using the “stroke” technique (kafasor), 5-15 cm long, decorated with rhombuses in a wide variety of variations. The border was usually lemon-yellow in color, except for those villages located above the Dniester River, where more neutral colors were used (green, less often blue, white, black, etc.).
The ornaments on the sleeves of the Bukovina vyshyvanka could be of three types:
1. Straight (three vertical stripes directed perpendicular to the setpoint)
2. Oblique (embroidery that had the appearance of three oblique stripes, different in ornamental structure and placed at an angle of 45 degrees to the setting)
3. Chess (an ornament that fit into a rhombic grid across the entire lower part of the sleeve).
Shirts with straight and slanted sleeves were most common in Bukovina Podillia, while the rhombic grid became a distinctive feature of shirts from the Bukovina Hutsul region.
The chest in the embroidered Chernivtsi region was not so richly decorated, as it was covered by other elements of the outfit (a keptar or a tsurkanka). The ornaments were mostly plant-based: leaves and flowers, and in some places you could see the inclusion of birds.
We see that Bukovinian embroidery is truly interesting, popular, and one of the most non-trivial patterns in Ukraine. Bukovinian embroidery is, first of all, bright colors, bold color combinations, and beads as the main element of decoration.
If a woman buys an embroidered shirt in such colors, her mood will definitely improve, but a man can choose slightly more restrained ornaments, which, however, will not negatively affect his mood.
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