Almost every resident of Ukraine has heard about the incredible Borshchiv embroidered shirts at least once in their life. In general, Borshchiv embroidery can be described as shirts with a solid, slightly voluminous embroidery, the dominant color of which is black, other colors are used only to frame the contours of the embroidered ornaments. These shirts have become a real calling card of their region, and stories about their beauty and uniqueness are heard all over the world.
According to folk tales and legends, the appearance of Borshchiv shirts embroidered with black threads is explained by historical events that became tragic for our people. The Borshchiv region was a place of constant attacks by the Turks and Tatars in the 15th-17th centuries. During such attacks, the population of the region was taken prisoner, and the villages were ruthlessly devastated, plundered and destroyed. As a result of one of such attacks, all the men in several neighboring villages in the Transnistrian region tragically died, and women and young girls, as a sign of mourning for their loved ones and relatives, mourning their difficult and tragic fate, made a vow to wear mourning for several, as researchers claim, seven, generations and even get married in church in shirts embroidered with black threads. They kept their word.
Of course, now you can find many modern shirts created according to the patterns of the ancient clothes of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers, but the most valuable both in Ukraine and far beyond its borders are those ancient shirts that were sewn a century or two ago. Such shirts are called "Borshchiv cotton" sewn "on the sleeves". The main features of such a "cotton" shirt are the use of bleached homespun linen, mainly hemp, the use of black woolen thread (black thread was popularly called "black cotton"), a simple cut and a thick, dense ornament. Shirts created in the 20s-30s of the last century were embroidered by the last generation, which was supposed to keep that ancient promise.
Borshchiv shirts are diverse and practically not similar to each other, but for the embroidered shirts of this region there was a clear three-tiered system of placing the ornament on the sleeves. The upper part of the sleeve, as it was called "ustavka", was most densely filled with embroidered patterns. Below, under the "ustavka" were placed the so-called "wrinkles", and below - stripes of embroidered patterns up to the wrist, and the stripes could be placed both vertically or horizontally, and diagonally. The choice of placement of embroidered stripes depended on the area where the shirt was embroidered, such stripes also had their own specific name.
Perhaps, it is precisely because of their unique feature that Borshchiv black shirts occupy their separate and honorable place among the variety of Ukrainian folk clothing. Borshchiv embroidered shirts are unique, inimitable and extremely valuable, because they have preserved the ancient traditions and knowledge that our ancestors entrusted to them. Most art historians, ethnographers and scientists agree that it is Borshchiv and Poltava embroidery techniques and ornaments that have remained practically in their original form to this day, they have practically not been influenced by other, not quite authentic trends in embroidery. Borshchiv and Poltava embroidery is a phenomenal phenomenon that has forever preserved fragments of Trypillia culture.
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