Chernihiv Oblast

Chernihiv embroidery is known for very fine stitches that look like beadwork and for white counted satin stitch, eyelets and drawn-thread work. Its probably oldest surviving example is a rushnyk dated 1746 with a geometric pattern of rhombuses, kept in the regional history museum.

The rushnyk bears an inscription with a date: 1746. It is probably the oldest example of Chernihiv embroidery, and it is kept in the regional history museum. It is where we begin the story of Chernihiv embroidery ornament.

What the 1746 rushnyk shows

It is made of homespun linen and embroidered in counted satin stitch, eyelet work (the same technique that other regions call "nightingale eyes"), merezhka and shtapivka. The ornament is geometric, built of rhombuses. It is embroidered in white thread without a single coloured accent. This set of techniques defines the oldest layer of the Chernihiv vyshyvanka.

This rushnyk shows what Chernihiv embroidery was like before the later changes in fashion and technique that came to the region in the 19th and 20th centuries along with nationwide trends.

Other surviving pieces show rhombic grids, wavy lines, zigzags and cross-shaped ornaments resembling a square. Little trees were embroidered on women's shirts - a motif that looks more restrained in its Chernihiv version than, for example, the lush bouquets of the Donetsk region. This restraint is typical of Chernihiv embroidery as a whole.

Chernihiv embroidery ornament: why the stitch is so fine

The region is known for extraordinarily fine stitches that visually resemble beadwork. This is how sources describe the tradition too. It is by this stitch that the Chernihiv vyshyvanka is recognised even from afar, before you look at the motif itself.

According to tradition, the old "orlyk" motif (a double-headed eagle) gradually turned into plant elements, losing its recognisability with each new generation of embroiderers who copied it. This is not a documented scientific fact but a tale.

The double-headed eagle is a wandering motif: a similar one appears in descriptions of the Odesa region (as an influence of Moldovan tradition) and the Kirovohrad region (where tradition interprets it as the unity of male and female principles). Three regions, three different explanations of the same sign, and we present none of them as the only correct one.

520 rushnyky in one catalogue

The researcher Vira Zaichenko worked through the collection of the Tarnovskyi Chernihiv Historical Museum and many years of field research to compile Ukraine's first complete catalogue of a museum collection of embroidered rushnyky - 520 items, arranged by district of the region, each with its date and description.

The book also traces the functions of the rushnyk in the rituals of the Chernihiv-Siversk land and follows the roots of the tradition back to the time of Kyivan Rus. With this scope, the vyshyvankas of the Chernihiv region can be studied as a system rather than through isolated samples.

Twenty years of one embroiderer

In September the Tarnovskyi Regional History Museum - the same museum that keeps the oldest Chernihiv embroidery, the 1746 rushnyk - opened an exhibition by embroiderer Olha Kostiuchenko to mark twenty years of her creative work. Her first piece, the rushnyk "Sky for Two", was made in 2000 under the guidance of her teacher.

Besides embroidery, the exhibition included block printing, pysanky and dolls, everything the artist had worked on over two decades. So in this museum the Chernihiv vyshyvanka can be seen both as an 18th-century piece and as present-day work.

Colours in Chernihiv vyshyvankas

White dominates, with touches of red, in the Novhorod-Siverskyi area also blue or light blue, while black appeared late and remained rare. This brings the region close to the Poltava and Sumy group, where white is also the basis - but the approach here is different: white prevails rather than pushing everything else out completely, as in the Poltava region, where there is no colour at all.

The difference lies in proportion, not in the presence of white itself: a Poltava shirt is white on its own, a Chernihiv one is white with clear, if few, coloured touches that always remain secondary. This is the easiest way to tell a Chernihiv shirt from a Poltava one by eye.

The Chernihiv region within the Left Bank tradition

The region borders the Kyiv and Sumy regions, and the links are visible in both directions: the left bank of the Kyiv region is technically closer to the Chernihiv and Poltava regions than to the right-bank Brocard line, while the Sumy region mostly follows the Poltava type - white thread and satin stitch. So Chernihiv vyshyvankas are best viewed together with their left-bank neighbours.

The Chernihiv vyshyvanka adds its own most noticeable feature to this shared white group - an exceptionally fine stitch that neither neighbour has in such concentration.

White across the region, bright in the Novhorod-Siverskyi area

Embroiderer Olha Kostiuchenko, drawing on Vira Zaichenko's work "Embroidery of the Chernihiv Region", told Suspilne (2023) that shirts were embroidered white on white throughout the Chernihiv region, with coloured elements, mostly red, added depending on the place and time. A distinctive feature of Chernihiv shirts is that the pattern on the hem did not repeat the patterns of the sleeves or neckline.

The brightest are the shirts of the Novhorod-Siverskyi district, embroidered not only in white and red but also "red on white", in places red with blue or light blue. According to the embroiderer, black was added rarely and appeared late, at the end of the 19th century: she links this to the availability of dyes, since black thread is hard to dye at home and fades over time. Sleeve samples from the Sosnytsia and Korop districts show a pattern called "birches".

Head ties, zanyzuvannia and Brocard soap

The oldest elements, according to Kostiuchenko, survived best in women's headwear: ties embroidered in red thread in zanyzuvannia, considered one of the oldest techniques. The ornament is the same on both sides but differs like a photo and its negative, so the tie could be worn either way round. The most archaic motif is rhombuses with "offshoots", curled "horns" and "tails", with extra rhombuses inside.

Peasant women got embroidery charts in the 19th century, the embroiderer recounts, thanks to the "folk soap" of perfumer Brocard with a chart inserted: little flowers, roses, violets. At the same time grapes appear in Chernihiv embroidery and red-and-black colours spread. The embroidery of the nobility in the Cossack Baroque era was entirely different: silk, imported fabrics, gold and silver thread work.

Chernihiv embroidery in the 2018 field records

In the summer of 2018 an ethnographic expedition of the State Scientific Centre for the Protection of Cultural Heritage from Technogenic Disasters surveyed the villages of Chernihiv district. Its findings were published in the collection "Folk Culture of Chernihiv District" (2019), where Anastasiia Pankova described how shirts were sewn and decorated here. The oldest women's type turned out to be the shirt with shoulder inserts (ustavka), made of homespun linen.

Festive shirts were usually cut in one piece to the hem, but that depended on the family's means: shirts "with a pidtychka", where the lower part was made of coarser cloth, were common too. From the second half of the 20th century the "kutsyk" spread, a waist-length shirt worn under a skirt with a bib. A plain shirt was made of three panels, a festive one of factory "kalenkor" calico of two, and Chernihiv embroidery gradually moved from homespun cloth to bought fabric.

The sleeves of festive shirts are wide and gathered towards the wrist. This part was called "chokhly" or "chekholchyky" and decorated with embroidery, small scallops and a ladder stitch along the edges. The hem carried wide drawn-thread bands with floral or geometric patterns, white and sometimes with touches of red. Pankova singles out the joining drawn-thread seams that connected the panels near the hem, in one colour or several.

Arnament, tsatski and padmulovka: three layers of ornament

According to the researcher, Chernihiv embroidery changed in layers. The oldest are geometric patterns in the lyshtva, slanted satin stitch and "vyriezanie belliu" (white cutwork) techniques, worked in white and red with touches of blue. Later, as factory dyes spread, blue was replaced by black. Villagers called this kind of decoration simply "arnament".

The next layer was "brokarshchyna", locally called "tsatski": cross-stitch patterns ("padkhreshchik") in red and black, copied from paper. In the Chernihiv region, unlike other areas, they spread quite early, already in the second half of the 19th century. The most common motifs were roses, oak leaves and grapes, though geometric imitations of older patterns also occur.

The third layer was satin stitch, "padmulovka". It came with calico, which is harder to embroider with counted techniques than homespun linen. The colours were now polychrome, since both dyes and ready-dyed threads were available, and the ornament was mostly floral. In places a dark ground came into fashion too: dark blue, dark green, dark burgundy. Within one century Chernihiv embroidery went from white counted work to colourful satin stitch.

The men's shirt and village fashions

The everyday men's shirt in Chernihiv district was made of coarse grey unbleached linen or hemp: tunic-like, straight-cut, collarless, reaching a little below the waist. It was worn outside the trousers and belted. The festive shirt was made of finer cloth, and according to the respondents the embroidery went on the chest opening, a small stand-up collar and the cuffs. So men's embroidered shirts from the Chernihiv region were restrained, decorated in only a few places.

The expedition noticed that fashions did not spread only from Chernihiv. In the village of Borovyky the beaded women's necklace "pletionka" appeared after the war: women had seen it in Germany and brought it home. In Petrushyn in 1958 a craze for pink broke out, and everything possible was dyed pink because someone had brought a lot of dye to the village. Such local stories explain why neighbouring villages could dress differently.

Nabozhnyky, eagle and red rushnyky

In the same collection Nataliia Telehei described the woven rushnyky of Chernihiv district. The expedition recorded local names: utyrach, nabozhnyk, krasnyi (red), orlystyi (with eagles) and Krolevets rushnyky. A "red" rushnyk had a red woven pattern on a white ground, an "eagle" one had woven birds, eagles and ducks, flowers, rhombuses and zigzags. The nabozhnyk, hung over icons, was woven long, three to four metres.

Hanna Trotsenko calls embroidery the most widespread decorative art of the Chernihiv region. Embroidered rushnyky of the late 19th and early 20th centuries are typically cross-stitched in red and black threads: human figures, birds, roosters, roses, poppies, guelder rose, grapes, "vases" and embroidered lines of verse. A wedding rushnyk from the village of Voznesenske, made in 1938, shows a woman carrying a yoke with water and lines about Natalka Poltavka, in just two colours, red and black, which the researcher calls a signature feature of this area.

From the mid-20th century satin stitch with a wide palette spread. Trotsenko names Zinaida Lukianenko of Sedniv as a contemporary master of art embroidery: her own rushnyky, panels and pictures reinterpret folk ornaments. So the embroidery and rushnyky of the Chernihiv region are still being made today.

Frequently asked questions

Is 1746 really the earliest date?

It is the earliest dated piece in the collection of the Chernihiv Historical Museum: a towel with an inscription and a date, embroidered in white thread. It is probably the earliest overall, but older pieces cannot be ruled out entirely, because museums only hold what survived and was handed over to them.

What does the orlyk motif mean?

It is an old pattern based on the double-headed eagle. According to tradition, over time it turned into plant elements, and in later pieces only a specialist can recognise the original form.

Where can I see the towel catalogue?

In Vira Zaichenko's book "Embroidery of the Chernihiv Region. Towels", published by Rodovid. It is the first complete catalogue of a museum's embroidered towel collection in Ukraine: 520 pieces from the Tarnovskyi Chernihiv Historical Museum, arranged by district.

Why is there little black in Chernihiv embroidery?

Old Chernihiv embroidery was white with touches of red. According to embroiderer Olha Kostiuchenko, black appeared only at the end of the 19th century, together with more accessible dyes and Brocard charts, and is rare in old shirts.

What was cross-stitch called in the Chernihiv region?

According to the 2018 expedition records from Chernihiv district, "Brocard" cross-stitch patterns were called "tsatski" and the cross-stitch itself "padkhreshchik". The older geometric embroidery in white and red was simply called "arnament", and the later satin stitch "padmulovka".

What is an "eagle" rushnyk?

It is a woven rushnyk from the Chernihiv region with birds, eagles and ducks, as well as flowers, rhombuses and zigzags. It was hung over icons, so eagle rushnyky also count as nabozhnyky.

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