Donetsk Oblast

Donetsk embroidery is traditionally worked in red, black and white: lush flowers, bouquets and trees on a light ground, with red outweighing black. One of its most recognisable elements is the rose, almost always full and lavish rather than reduced to a few lines.

In the book "Embroidered Donechchyna" every community of the region tells its own story in the language of Donetsk embroidery ornament. The Kramatorsk community is a tree of life with an embroidered pixel symbol of defence. Mariupol is the sea and an anchor. Bakhmut is the Bakhmutka river and a Cossack fortress as a sign of resilience.

Symbols that have only just appeared

This is not an archaeological find but a modern cultural project: each territorial community received its own embroidered symbol that combines historical motifs with what is happening right now. So in this project the Donetsk vyshyvanka is still being made, not only studied.

A telling example of how the Donetsk vyshyvanka lives today is an embroiderer from Velyka Novosilka, 90 kilometres from occupied Donetsk. When she moved away, she took the most precious thing from home - her embroidery - and also rescued her neighbour's old embroidered rushnyk, which, judging by certain signs, encodes the family's memory of the Holodomor.

Fifty works on the second floor

For all three winter months of occupation, her fifty works, including a Donetsk vyshyvanka with Greek motifs, were kept on the second floor of the Dnipro Art Museum - two halls, framed, under glass, next to works by masters of Petrykivka painting.

She gave one of her panels, "Flowers of the Steppe", to the Yavornytskyi House Museum - the same historian whose collection underlies the description of embroidery in the neighbouring Dnipropetrovsk region. Yavornytskyi loved steppe grasses and dried flowers, so this gift was not a random choice but a deliberate dialogue between Donetsk Oblast embroidery ornament and what has already been documented about the steppe tradition as a whole.

Donetsk Oblast embroidery ornament: flowers and birds

The traditional basis of Donetsk Oblast embroidery ornament is bright black-and-red ornaments on a light background: lush flowers, whole bouquets, trees. One of the most recognisable elements is the rose, which here is almost always lush rather than stylised down to a few lines.

Wedding rushnyky from the Donetsk region also feature birds - according to tradition, an element of enchantment and fairy tale, a wish of happiness for the young family. There is no documentary evidence for this reading.

Colours of Donetsk Oblast embroidery

The traditional thread colours of the Donetsk Oblast vyshyvanka for women's and men's shirts are red, black and white. A warm palette with red prevailing over black is a feature that distinguishes the Donetsk region from the neighbouring Kharkiv region, where black historically prevailed.

What the Donetsk shirt was like

An overview of traditional clothing in southern Ukraine treats the Donbas together with the neighbouring lands of Zaporizhzhia and the Azov coast as a separate zone, conventionally called the Donetsk region. Women's shirts here were sewn with straight shoulder inserts, either with a separate lower part or full-length, the sleeve ends were gathered on a thread, and sometimes frills called "chokhly" were sewn on. The embroidery of the Donetsk shirt was white or red and black: sleeves, inserts and sometimes the hem and collar were embroidered. At the end of the 19th century shirts on a yoke spread, mostly from factory-made linen.

The men's Donetsk vyshyvanka had an embroidered chest, cuffs and collar, and in places the hem. The shirt was worn untucked, belted with a woven red or blue sash with tassels, and a waistcoat was always worn over it.

Old shirts of the region were also kept by the Donetsk Regional Museum of Local History, founded in 1924. According to the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine, in 1956-1957 its director T. Shapovalov added to the ethnographic collection material from the first half of the 19th century from the Volnovakha district: Ukrainian women's and men's clothing, including embroidered shirts.

What researchers from Kramatorsk, Bakhmut and Sloviansk found

Since 2019 Oksana Proselkova, a teacher from Kramatorsk, has been collecting old clothing of eastern Ukraine: she travels to villages and searches markets and auctions. According to her observations, reported by Suspilne (2024), Donetsk embroidery features anthropomorphic motifs, animals and falcons, and later plant ornament joined the geometry: lilies, acorns, squirrels, and the lush flower often called a rose is in fact a full "ruzha" resembling a wild rose, embroidered in Bulgarian cross-stitch. The colours are red and black, red and blue, and white on white.

The women's shirt was long, down to the ground, with rich embroidery at the top, while the men's was more modest: collar, chest and the lower sleeves. The lower part of a full-length shirt was made of coarser linen and replaced from time to time.

In Bakhmut, Svitlana Kravchenko founded the "Bakhmut Amulet" workshop. On Vyshyvanka Day 2016 she staged a show of fifty costumes in the middle of the central square, from exact copies to genuinely old pieces, and in 2015 soldiers gave her an everyday white-on-white shirt from the village of Paraskoviivka, sewn by hand and embroidered in two techniques. In Sloviansk, Larysa Azimova, founder of the "Sloviany" studio club (2009), collects as well. After 2022 some of these collections were evacuated: Proselkova's collection is now exhibited in Kolomyia.

The Donetsk region between Slobozhanshchyna and the South

The north of the Donetsk region historically belongs to Slobozhanshchyna together with the Kharkiv, Luhansk and Sumy regions, while the overview of traditional clothing places the Donbas in the southern zone together with Zaporizhzhia and the Azov coast. This double belonging explains why the Donetsk vyshyvanka combines white and red-and-black embroidery, and why its warm palette with red prevailing and lush plant motifs sets it apart from its neighbours.

From a chance mishap to a civic organisation

Another embroiderer from the Donetsk lands founded the NGO "Embroidery in the Clothing of Prominent Ukrainians" - it all began when she sewed an outfit that turned out too small, and instead of throwing the work away she turned the failure into a new hobby, which later grew into her life's work.

Before the full-scale invasion, the towns of the Donetsk region held parades, exhibitions and workshops on Vyshyvanka Day; today most such events are physically impossible, but displaced people from the east put on their favourite shirts every year, and the Donetsk vyshyvanka remains a symbol that connects those who left with those who remember home.

Frequently asked questions about Donetsk embroidery ornament

What is "Embroidered Donetsk Region"?

A contemporary cultural project and book in which every community of the region received its own embroidered symbol. For example, for the Kramatorsk community it is a tree of life with a pixel symbol of defence, for Mariupol the sea and an anchor, for Bakhmut the Bakhmutka river and a Cossack fortress.

Why were birds embroidered on wedding towels?

By tradition, birds added a touch of magic and fairy tale to the pattern and stood for a wish of happiness to the young family. This is a legend: our sources have no documented explanation.

How does Donetsk embroidery differ from Kharkiv embroidery?

In the balance of colours. The Donetsk region has a warm palette in which red outweighs black, with lush bouquets, while in the Kharkiv region black historically dominated.

What was the traditional Donetsk shirt like?

The women's shirt was long, with straight inserts, embroidered in white or red and black on the sleeves, inserts and sometimes the hem and collar. The men's shirt was worn untucked with a red or blue sash and embroidered on the chest, cuffs and collar.

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