Semantics of Traditional Embroidery on Ukrainian Clothing in Folklore: A Modern View

Abstract

Significant progress has not been achieved yet in the search for the semantics of traditional Ukrainian embroidery on clothes. In our opinion, this problem is related to another one: how and why did embroidery on traditional Ukrainian clothes appear in the first place? So, let us outline the search path associated with folklore texts, within the framework of the so-called “social life of things”. This approach is based on the results of research by American culturalists F. Boas and A. Kroeber, as well as those close to them, although evolutionists, L. Sternberg and Ukrainian K. Shyrotskyi. They have demonstrated how the genesis of embroidery on clothes is originated from pictograms with complex mythological-worldview or ritual-magical semantics, the meaning of which was initially understandable to all community members, to decoration with the ornaments. For various peoples of North and South America, Siberia, Indochina, Indonesia, China, Japan, and other countries and parts of the world, the indicated genesis and development of decoration can be traced in various realities of the material culture: dishes, housing, interior items, tools, weapons, etc. The appearance of embroidery on clothes is associated with its important symbolic functions. We mean the inclusion of clothing in the existing picture of the world through its semantics and the role of a protective amulet. According to the authors, the existence of embroidered pictograms on Ukrainian clothes in the past is stated in the folklore texts, especially koliadky and schedrivky indicating the former existence of plot patterns in the form of reminiscences. The texts of koliadky and schedrivky are connected with the season when the Savior was born, have preserved echoes of ancient cosmogonic motifs, e.g. the “tree of life”, but reflected in the spirit of Christian associations. They are about embroidery on clothes, including by “Mrs. Mary”, in the Christmas – New Year period: the moon, stars, flowers, birds, animals, and less often people, personifying various spheres of the existing picture of the world. The locations of these images correspond to the places they occupy in the Universe. We frequently find marriage motifs in folklore texts, particularly the embroidery of a shirt for the groom. This is not an accident, given the cosmogonic significance of the thread in folk ideas. The motifs of love and eroticism are also present in folklore texts associated with embroidery on clothes, particularly on shirts. Furthermore, we assume that in the past, the aforementioned motifs and symbols embroidered on clothing have formed integral plots, the meaning of those is forgotten over time, so that now they are perceived as ordinary patterns.

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