Each culture is characterized by its own set of decorations. There is a unique kind of adornments peculiar to a particular cultural group or individual complex and there are multipurpose decorations that are present in every culture and without which, at large, it is impossible to imagine a woman. Universal adornments include earrings. This decoration is known all over the world and has many shapes. Ukrainian women in this regard were not exception and for this reason earrings had a significant value among the Ukrainian traditional clothes. The Ukrainian traditional jewelry is characterized by sufficiently large variety of earrings.
The most conventional for Ukrainian women were earrings, which included elements of floral ornament, images of birds and earrings in the shape of the moon. Each type of earrings had its own colorful purely folk name, which, as a rule, comes from its shape. For example there existed earrings with such designations as mallows, mallows with butterflies, knysaks, berries, oaklets, babblers, ducks, doves, bagels, dutky*.
*made by inflation
One of the most common ones were earrings in the shape of the moon, which were popular among all Ukrainian women, regardless of the place and region of residence. This type of earrings was the easiest to produce and so the most wide spread.
Have a look at the earrings and ornaments of the time of Kyivska Rus (as an example – paintings on the walls of ancient cathedrals) and you will clearly see that the appearance of these traditional Ukrainian adornments was formed many centuries ago and remained permanent for almost a chiliad.
Traditionally, earrings were decorated with stones, glass, beads, but there were also common earrings without additional decoration, made of metal only. Ukrainian women preferred mainly corals as a decoration. Garnet and pearls were very popular among all Ukrainian women.
In the manufacture of earrings, similar to the breast and neck adornments, goldsmiths widely used coins. There is a large variety of forms of earrings with coins.
Earrings with crosses were also very popular among women.
Fedir Vovk in his “Studio of Ukrainian Ethnography and anthropology,” writes that the goldsmiths are extremely constant in keeping to ancient traditions in the forms and in the illustration, even where exterior influence was quite possible. In particular, he noted that in Kharkiv region there is a production of earrings separately one kind for Ukrainians and another one for the Russians. "Earrings for Ukrainians – a front enlarged hook with a shield attached, which has a small colored glass inside together with three long and narrow pendants which resemble beads." As the ethnographer notes, the Ukrainian women gave their preference to corals as a material.
At the same time, under the influence of various factors, there were also some local features. In other words, in certain regions women wore earrings with local charm samples which were hardly found in other regions and thus were formed their own special local forms. For example, in Poltava region, near Kremenchug met earrings made in the technique of filigree.
There was also a certain closure of earrings with the breast adornments which their owner wore in complex. Particularly, almost in every region there can be found earrings which individual components are similar to the shape of the dukach bow or its individual elements. This can be explained by the fact that goldsmith, who produced dukaches, provided at the same time a proper care for the similar form for other types of adornments that made it possible for him to create the whole set of jewelry in the same style.
Was it for real that Ukrainian women strictly adhered to compliance of certain forms of earrings in combination with those or other decorations and allowed themselves to wear adornments made by “illocal” goldsmiths? I haven’t found any mentions in the writings of ethnologists of the late XIX-early XX century concerning this. Modern scholars have their own view point as for this matter: some argue that Ukrainian women strictly held to all of the correspondences and they wore a certain type of earrings together with a particular type of jewelry in a concrete area, while others are convinced that the choice of earrings (like the kulaks, rings) was mainly due to their own aesthetic preferences and social factors and there were no strict rules in the selection of the adornment.
I tend to the second point of view, because merchants used to bring jewelry to the fair from other regions, somewhile, visiting Holy places or traveling on duty, relatives brought to their wives jewelry from other countries. For example, it was very popular to bring to the loved ones jewelry bought in Kyiv Lavra-Pecherska, both in Western Ukraine as well as in its southern or eastern parts. Ethnographers note that neighbors often gave money to such “pilgrim” specifically for this purpose. Considering that people used to travel much less than a modern man and the fact that traditional adornment at the beginning of the ХХ century mostly consisted of peasant jewelry, and peasant families were large, the variety of jewelry for most women was limited to the range of the local goldsmiths’ feedworks which had more available price. The photos of that period also confirm this. In other words, one can argue that in the case women moved from one area to another, she changed her “invasive” jewelry to the local or couldn't wear them in combination. For example, Lubensky dukach among with Veremyivka type earrings.
Thus, a wide variety of forms of earrings, which were mostly worn by ordinary rural women, breaks the erratic mass idea of the eternally long-suffering Ukrainian people and their poverty.
A large number of splendid, stylistically seasoned and sparkly decorated earrings indicates that women usually had in their use more than one pair of these ornaments, mainly because they could afford it. There were everyday decorations (“moons”, “berries”, "dutky"*), in which they worked and ran the house, as well as festive ones with corals, pearls, pendants, which were worn on a high-day.
Yaroslava Kovalenko
PhD in History
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