Embroidery

Ukrainian Vyshyvanka Patterns

This post is a translation of the introduction and chapter 1 of Lidya Bebeshko’s informative book on Ukrainian embroidery, covering patterns for traditional folk shirts (also called vyshyvanki) and the embroidered designs used to decorate them. The second part of the book consists of a plethora of charted designs for men’s and women’s shirt embroidery from various regions of Ukraine. I got this book last Christmas from my sister, but as it was in Ukrainian, it’s taken me a while to bite the bullet and dig into it. After taking a course at the Royal School of Needlework in London on Ukrainian whitework earlier this year, I was inspired to go back and start trying to parse my way through the Ukrainian with help from online tools and my knowledge of Russian, which was only somewhat helpful. I hope you find Ms. Bebeshko’s insights as useful as I did.

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Medieval Russian Embroidery (Majasova, 1971)

This post my translation of the book Medieval Russian Embroidery (Древнерусское шитьё), by Natalia Andreevna Majasova (1919-2005), an expert in this area of study. Over the many years of her career, she was instrumental in the research and transformation of several collections of medieval Russian embroidered works, first at the Zagorsk State Historical-Artistic Museum-Reserve (the Soviet-era museum built on the site of the Trinity-Sergiev Lavra, a famous monastery outside Moscow), and then later with the Museums of the Moscow Kremlin. This book, published in 1971, is a general overview, with over 50 full-color plates showing examples from the major embroidery centers of Moscow and Novgorod from the 15th-16th centuries, a small number of post-period items from the 17th century, and a lengthy introductory article on the subject.

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