Exhibition "Kaluga Women’s Folk Costume" Automatic translate

The exhibition presents samples of traditional women’s costume from the collections of museums of district and rural houses of culture, the Kaluga United Museum-Reserve, the House of Folk Art and the Cinema “Central”, the ethnographic collection of Sergei Anatolyevich Glebushkin, modern products made according to traditional patterns, individual elements of a peasant folk costume.

In the Kaluga Territory, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, there were two types of folk women’s costume: a shirt with a sarafan and a kokoshnik, typical of the northern regions of Russia, and a shirt with a ponyona and magpie, typical of the southern territories. Women’s folk costume with its cut, trim, color and texture of the fabric, the way of wearing gave comprehensive information about the age, social status and place of residence of the owner. For both types of costume, the main components were a hat, a shirt, an apron, and a belt with which the shirt was belted. He had magical powers, protecting the owner from evil spirits. According to popular beliefs, losing the belt - meant incurring great misfortunes.

The main color combination in the suit: white, red, yellow, blue, green. Each color had its own ancient symbolism associated with nature, from which mythological and aesthetic ideas were drawn. Clothing was supposed to protect a person from evil forces, and embroidery and patterned weaving served as such a talisman. Finishing, embroidery were located on the most important parts - the headdress, collar, mantle, wrist and hem. The fabric itself was considered impenetrable to the spirits of evil, since objects fabricated abundantly equipped with spell ornamentation (ruffled, spinning wheel, weaving mill) participated in its manufacture. It was important to protect the places where the enchanted cloth of clothing ended and the human body began.

Towels played a special ritual role throughout a person’s life, closely adjoining to a suit in everyday life. When a person was born, an indispensable participant in all the rituals associated with this, the christening was a towel. Towel also played a leading role in the wedding ritual. The coffin was also lowered into the grave on towels. Embroidery in the decoration of towels paid great attention. During the drought and epidemics, all women in the same village wove and embroidered an “ordinary” towel (“about one day”) for one day. According to the beliefs of the peasants, it possessed magical power and could ward off disaster from the village. The symbolism of various embroidery patterns from ancient times had a deep meaning. The embroiderers could not always accurately explain it, but they remembered the benevolence of the ancient patterns. But the exhibition presents towels of the pre-war era, when the embroidery technique became easier, and floral ornament dominated in the subject.