Kherson Oblast

Kherson embroidery rests on the contrast of black and white and stands out for its wide range of animals: horse, hare, fish, rooster, cuckoo, even butterflies and spiders. By tradition, the region's main ideogram is the World Tree, and before her wedding a girl had to embroider forty rushnyky.

Nothing living was ever embroidered on the rushnyk the couple stood on during the wedding ceremony - only ornament. The reason is simple and literal: you must not trample the living underfoot. This rule shows best how carefully thought out the Kherson vyshyvanka was, down to the smallest details.

Forty rushnyky before the wedding

Before her wedding a girl had to embroider forty rushnyky with her own hands - more than in most other regions, where twelve or twenty are mentioned. The embroidery on clothing showed at once whether a family was wealthy: rich embroidery meant the family had time for such work or money for a hired embroiderer.

So the family's status was read from the Kherson vyshyvanka, as from clothing in general.

Kherson embroidery ornament: animals and symbols

Kherson embroidery ornament stands out for its rich range of animal motifs. Among the animals are the horse, the hare, fish and frogs; among the birds, the rooster, the owl, the dove and the cuckoo; there are even insects - the fly, the butterfly, the spider and flying beetles.

According to tradition, the main ideogram of the Kherson Oblast vyshyvanka is the World Tree, as an image of Mother Earth. Beyond that, dates of birth and the months of the year also had their own embroidered codes - a system that is now hard to decipher completely.

When the museum became a target

The Kherson Local History Museum, which held a large part of the Kherson embroidery collection, was founded in 1890 at the suggestion of the archaeologist Viktor Hoshkevych; before the war its holdings numbered more than 180,000 items. During the occupation in 2022 the museum was looted: among other things, a Gospel of 1785 was taken away, and part of the loot was reportedly moved first to occupied Henichesk and then to Crimea.

That is why documenting the Kherson Oblast vyshyvanka matters so much today: some of the original sources are now inaccessible even to researchers.

Colours of Kherson embroidery

In Kherson vyshyvankas the palette rests on the contrast of black and white, without intermediate shades. Old shirts are described as black, and alongside them there was also the white-on-white technique - the same one that made the Poltava region famous.

The Kherson region among the Black Sea regions

The Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kherson regions share a similar geography but differ in the character of their ornament: the Odesa region absorbs outside influences, the Mykolaiv region keeps to stylised plant forms, and the Kherson vyshyvanka to a black-and-white contrast with a wide range of animal motifs.

Against this background, Kherson vyshyvankas stand out with the most contrasting palette of the three - where the neighbours work with colour, here everything is built on the opposition of black and white.

Symbols chosen for a person

Some symbols were chosen for the specific person for whom the rushnyk or shirt was intended, taking into account their age, sex and role in the family.

So researchers still cannot fully decipher the whole system of signs: without living bearers of the tradition to explain why this particular bird or animal was chosen for a particular person, part of the meaning is lost forever.

What the museum holdings contain

The Kherson Regional Museum of Local History holds more than 150 embroidered shirts from different regions of Ukraine. Senior researcher Maryna Askurava says that a large share of them were brought by settlers from the Poltava, Kyiv, Cherkasy, Sumy and other regions. The oldest shirt in the collection dates from the end of the 19th century.

Shirts sewn in the Kherson region itself are mostly of factory-made fabric. A cut with a yoke, the so-called shirt "do hestky", was popular in the south, while homespun cloth was used less.

Why shirts without embroidery were worn in the Kherson region

According to Maryna Askurava, shirts without any embroidery were often worn in the Kherson region. The reason is the late settlement of the land, at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. An embroidered shirt was very regional: it showed where a person came from and marked out one's own people. In the south, the museum researcher explains, "essentially everyone was a stranger to everyone else".

At the same time she dispels the myth of a poor wardrobe: even a poor peasant woman had at least thirty festive shirts, not counting everyday ones, and wealthier women had up to a hundred. Most shirts were made by women before marriage.

The festive dress of a Kherson girl

In its "Local Studies of Tavria" project, the Oles Honchar Kherson Regional Universal Scientific Library describes a girl's festive dress like this: an embroidered shirt, a skirt, an apron (zapaska), a belt and a bodice (kersetka), always with a necklace and a wreath with ribbons. A long skirt down to the heels, made of six panels, was worn too, as well as the "baska", a fitted jacket of fine woollen cloth with long sleeves.

In such a dress the Kherson vyshyvanka was most richly decorated on the sleeves and the hem, because the front of the shirt was covered by outerwear and necklaces. Trees of life in the form of little rose bouquets were embroidered on the sleeves, a grapevine on the upper inserts, and the black apron was decorated with plant ornament.

Alongside the black-and-white palette, the library also describes a coloured one. White on white, it says, is traditional for the Kherson and Poltava regions, while steppe shirts are dominated by plant patterns in yellow, light blue, green and red. Poppies were embroidered most often, roses less often, as well as cornflowers, lilac and small field flowers branching symmetrically from a central flower. Maryna Askurava adds that animal ornament here was not limited to roosters: there were even embroidered cats and dogs.

A portrait that is no longer there

The Kherson Art Museum held Mykhailo Brianskyi's painting "Portrait of a Girl in an Embroidered Shirt". During the occupation a Kherson embroiderer, a specialist in costume history, turned the pattern from the portrait into a cross-stitch chart and embroidered a shirt after it. In her view, the embroidery in the painting could come from the Kyiv region or the south, and such 19th-century patterns are rare in museum collections.

Before retreating from Kherson the occupiers looted the museum, and the portrait was taken away with other works; its whereabouts are unknown. So the shirt embroidered after the painting remains one of the few traces of this Kherson vyshyvanka.

Frequently asked questions

Why were animals and flowers not embroidered on the wedding towel?

Because the bride and groom stood on this towel during the wedding ceremony, and trampling on living things was considered unacceptable. So only ornament was embroidered on it, with no living images at all.

What does the World Tree symbolise?

By tradition, it is an image of Mother Earth and the central ideogram of Kherson embroidery. This is a traditional interpretation, not a documented academic fact.

Can the originals be seen in person today?

Only partly. The Kherson Local History Museum, which held a large share of the pieces, was looted during the occupation in 2022, so access to some originals is now limited or impossible.

Were all shirts in the Kherson region embroidered?

No. According to Maryna Askurava of the Kherson Regional Museum of Local History, because the land was settled late, shirts without embroidery were often worn here: embroidery showed where a person came from, and in the south everyone was a settler.

Which flowers were embroidered in the Kherson region?

According to the Kherson Regional Scientific Library, poppies most often, roses less often, as well as cornflowers, lilac and small field flowers. Trees of life in the form of little rose bouquets were embroidered on the sleeves of festive shirts.

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