Tetiana Kutsyr
Candidate of Art History, Scientific Researcher, Folk Art Department, Institute of Ethnology of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

The author focuses on the analysis of the folk embroidery features of the village of Luchytsy, Sheptytskyi district, Lviv region, based on the exhibition “Memory of the Genus” (12.02.24–29.03.24) at the Research Institute for Art Library Resources of Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Ukraine in Lviv. The main attention is paid to the traditional principles of women’s shirts decorating, as well as innovations of the first half of the 20th century, and their combination with each other.

Women’s shirts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries had shoulder inserts cut with a big button-down or a banded collars, and sleeves with cuffs of different widths. Patterns were often placed in horizontal stripes along the main structural lines, which were usually emphasized by two stripes of back stitches. There were also shirts with vertical ornaments along the central lines of the sleeves. The cross-stitch dominated in the shirts’ decor, monochrome (black), less often two-color (black-yellow, black-red) embroidery. Craftswo­men decorated shirts with geometric and floral ornaments, close to Sokal from other centers.

Based features of the traditional shirts’ decor were the proportionality of all the details of the items, the subordination of the decor to the items’ cut, black cross-stitch embroidered decor on white fabric, which evoked associations with lace.

In the women’s shirts of the 1920s and 1930s, the cut and decor changed significantly. Instead of the shoulder inserts cut, preference was given to a tunic-like or raglan shirts’ cut. The exquisite one- or two-color decoration was replaced by multi-colored patterns. Sometimes the color transformed traditional patterns beyond recognition, but the craftswomen also used ornaments characteristic of other historical and ethnographic regions of western Ukraine.

Constructive searches, the multivariate arrangement and interpretation of embroidered decoration indicate the formation of a new tradition, which, unfortunately, was not completed due to the Soviet occupation of 1939 and a series of tragic events for Ukraine provoked by it.

Keywords: embroidery, tradition, innovation, décor, cut, ornament, motive.

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