CLOTHING DECORATION
Ornamentation in folk clothing has been developing since Renaissance and Baroque. Sources from the 18th century describe various adornments. These were usually appliques, braiding, embroidery, tin buttons and studded belts. Types and forms of ornaments in folk clothing were influenced by the fact that peasants were ordered to produce embroidery, lace and entire clothes for the court and the church during the serfdom period. Thus, some non-traditional elements became incorporated into folk garments. Trends usually reached smaller villages via the cities and, since the 18th century, via the nobles who started abandoning their “Sarmatian” style and adopting newer fashions. Travelling tradesmen, craftsmen and workers such as rafters or sieve makers and traders were also responsible for spreading new trends in clothing. However, they were not passively accepted, but treated as an inspiration. Only certain elements, e.g. the cut of military coats, were incorporated into traditional clothing. Exterior influences were also evident in the variety of embroidery patterns and ornaments, which were influenced by other ethnic groups and regions that Lubelszczyzna bordered with – namely Polesie, Volhynia and Podole.
The second part of the 19th century saw a boom in the development of folk clothing – when it comes to material, form and ornamentation. Peasants became richer and more fabrics, dyes, haberdashery and inexpensive ornaments were manufactured in factories. This lead to more ornaments in clothing and the attempts to keep up with current trends, which subsequently caused the regional styles to diverge even more. While clothing from the Biłgoraj or Włodawa areas remained handwoven and home sewn, clothes from Krzczonów were transforming rapidly – when it comes to cuts and decorations – under the heavy influence of the city culture. However, it was most frequent for the old and the new elements to be mixed together. Handwoven and homespun fabrics were combined with velvet and manufactured haberdashery – such as sequins, beads, colourful tapes and strings, satin ribbons, silver and gold threads – to create unique and astonishingly beautiful garments.
Clothes, especially formal wear, constituted an important part of folk culture and people spared no expense to make them more ornate. They demonstrated the economic and social status of the wearer, but more importantly, they manifested the cultural identity of an individual. Clothes could indicate marital status and age. Young girls’ dresses differed from those worn by married women and widows. Maidens and young married women wore brighter and more vivid colours than older women, who dressed in darker and more toned hues. Some elements of clothing differentiated bachelors from married men – young men could wear fancier hat decorations and more vivid coloured vests or tunics.
In the middle of the 19th century, under the influence of the city fashion, bonnets and tulle half bonnets became popular, especially in the Krzczonów and Lubartów areas. They were given to brides as gifts on their wedding day; every married woman owned at least a couple of bonnets. They were decorated with ruffles, lace and white thread embroidery. Bonnets have been popular among European noble and bourgeois ladies since the 15th century and were readily accepted by Polish women, also in the country. The embroidery was elaborate and precise and depicted ornaments that were usually floral, with geometric patterns on the edges. It was usually created with a stitching technique that was determined by the tulle mesh pattern. The edges of the bonnets were trimmed with lace or scalloped and hemmed with a blanket stitch. Artificial flowers and leaves as well as ribbons were added as additional ornaments.
Elaborately braided bodices were also incredibly ornamental. Dark coloured (e.g. black, claret, navy blue and green) fabrics such as velvet or satin were perfectly matched with colourful embroidery. Bodices from Krzczonów were originally decorated with colourful ribbons and tapes, later with silver and gold thread, glossy ribbons, metallic threads and sequins. Corsets from the Bug river region belonged to a different category – they were decorated with the heart motif, trimmed with red and green ribbons, backstitched with a yellow thread and sometimes embroidered with silver thread and sequins. Bodices worn by the wives of sieve merchants and residents of Tarnogród also had their own appeal. They were made out of colourful brocade embroidered with metallic threads, out of colourful Chinese silk with jacquard flower ornaments or of single-colour damask silk.
Printing fabrics was another interesting way to decorate clothes. The technique was used in the second half of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. It involved imprinting ornaments on homespun cloth with wooden stamps covered with paint. The cloth was then used to sew skirts, called malowanki (painted skirts/objects). The printed ornaments were geometrized or floral, single-coloured, most often black, dark blue, blue or green. It was an unwritten rule that the pattern and colour used allowed others to identify the village the wearer came from. In the Tomaszów Lubelski area, cloth printed in stripes or checks was used not only to make skirts, but also to sew men’s trousers. Fabrics were usually printed by small-town tailors and pedlars, usually Jews, who worked in the Biłgoraj, Zamość, Krasnystaw, Hrubieszów and Tomaszów Districts. However, the technique was also used in the areas of Chełm and Włodawa.
A great variety of stitches and embroidered ornaments could be found in the Lubelszczyzna region. Types of used ornaments were determined by the area from which the dress came from. The decorations typically had striped composition and were used on shirts, corsets, aprons, skirts, frock coats, sheepskin coats, vests and hats.
Embroidery patterns on clothes from the Krzczonów area were organized in horizontal stripes that run parallel to the garment’s decorated edges. The oldest needlework was usually done in white and red, and additional colours, such as blue, yellow, black and orange, were added gradually later. Types of stitches also changed. Traditional backstitching, blanket stitch, drawn thread work and chain stitch was supplemented at the beginning of the 20th century with the cross stitch, which replaced other stitching techniques with time. Decoration motifs also changes – geometric patterns were enriched with stylised floral compositions.
The cross stitch patterns used on clothing from the Hrubieszów and Tomaszów areas were inspired by decorations from the nearby Volhynia. Floral motifs were the most common ornaments. Cross and satin stitches were used to decorate shirts, aprons, and women’s waistcoats. Tunics and waistcoats were also decorated with appliques and buttons, while russet and sheepskin coats were adorned with braiding.
Clothes made in the Biłgoraj area were typically adorned with geometrical embroidery (created with chain, satin, back and blanket stitches), which was arranged in stripes and was determined by the structure of the fabric. Women’s clothing was decorated with red and black, and later with blue patterns of intricate stitches. There were also two- and three-colour motifs which combined red, black and blue. Volutes and spirals were the most popular decorative motifs. They were used as a single motif or in patterns of twos, threes or fives (often arranged in the form of a tree). Russet coats were trimmed with braids, and sheepskin coats were embroidered with green and red satin stitches that formed patterns such as paws (three triangles arranged so that their tips touch), chests (a type of an isosceles triangle) and stars (circular shapes made by radial stitches). At the beginning of the 20th century, artisans started adorning men’s and women’s garments with more or less geometrized floral motifs made with cross stitches.
Perebory (or peretyki) was an interesting weaving technique of ornamenting fabrics that was popular in areas influenced by the Belorussian culture or inhabited by Rus people. It was used to adorn clothes in the Podlaski region style (in two variants – Włodawa and Bug styles), however, it was not known among the Rus residents of the Tomaszów, Biłgoraj and Chełm District. Weavers typically used factory cotton yarn in black, brown, navy blue and red (yellow and orange was originally used as an accent colour). A large number of ornaments arranged in stripes was usually woven on a big sheet of canvas and then cut into smaller parts and sawn onto clothes, e.g., shirts (as collars, cuffs, shoulder patches and bands). The woven design was usually made of rhombuses, triangles, squares, stars, crosses, herringbone patterns and flowers (especially in perebory made in the district of Parczew). Fabric for skirts, aprons and headdresses was woven together with the perebory ornament. Cross-stitch became widely used in the Podlaski region during the interwar period. Men’s shirts were usually ornamented with red and black geometric patterns arranged in stripes.
Lace, which was imported to Poland from Italy and Flanders in the 16th century, became widely used in folk costumes only at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Factory-made lace was used together with hand-made net and crotchet lace. It was used to hem shirt cuffs and collars as well as frock coats, aprons, bonnets, sometimes skirts (in the Bug, Tomaszów and Hrubieszów areas).
During World War I, men in the Lubelszczyzna region often wore leather belts with decorative buckles. The belts were decorated with brass circles or impressed ornaments (rhombuses, stars, circles, crosses, wheels and volutes) arranged in lines and made with iron stamps. Kalita, a traditional bag worn in the Biłgoraj area, was decorated in a similar fashion. At the beginning of the 20th century, leather belts in Krzczonów-style clothing were replaced by velveteen belts which were fastened by hooks, decorated with cut out patterns (okienka) and embroidered with bugles and sequins; or with velvet belts, trimmed with a red or green fringe, decorated with metallic thread, sequins and glass beads. In costumes from the Podlasie region, leather belts were replaced by colourful, woven belts like krajka (made of striped flax) and pojas (made of red-orange wool). Men girded their coats twice and tied the belts into a bow – either at the front or on the left hip. Krajka belts were also used by women.
The importance of traditional clothing caused garment decoration to become one of the most important fields of folk arts and crafts. Clothing constituted a colourful, spatial work of art produced by its owner as well as village and small-town artisans such as weavers, fullers, tailors, embroiderers, lacemakers, shoemakers and coat makers.
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