,,Ar iš balos tas gražumas mano prigimimo?” Mintys, kilusios skaitant tradicinei lietuvių valstiečių vyrų aprangai skirtą monografiją

Abstract

‘Mirror, Mirror on the W all, Who’s the Fairest of them All?’ Thoughts on a Monograph about the Traditional Clothing of Lithuanian Peasant Men The author of the review discusses the debatable aspects of Vida Kulikauskienė’s monograph ‘Traditional Clothing of Lithuanian Peasant Men’. First, he highlights the value of the book. He notes that the book is the result of Kulikauskienė‘s longterm research into traditional peasant men’s clothing, and the reconstruction and creation of the Lithuanian national clothes in relation to it. Ethnographic fieldwork, which began in the 1960s, took place within the context of the preparation of the ‘Historical Ethnographic Atlas of Baltic National Clothes’. Until then, research into women’s traditional clothing, which had been carried out for several decades, and the well-established picture of their regional sets, contrasted with men’s clothing as depicted mostly in a variety of fragmentary literary texts. After a few years, the ethnographic information covering the entire territory of Lithuania began to appear in Kulikauskienė’s articles published in various local monographs. After supplementing the data gathered during the ethnographic field-trips with literary material, and researching in museums and archives, Kulikauskienė wrote and sucessfully defended her doctoral dissertation. At the same time, an introductory text for the ‘Historical Ethnographic Atlas of Baltic National Clothes’ was written, and maps were compiled. The atlas was published in Riga in 1985. Before that, Kulikauskienė published a series of articles on clothing, and wrote a manuscript for this monograph. The ethnologists Dr Irma Šidiškienė and Dr Dalia Bernotaitė-Beliauskienė took the initiative and prepared the final version of the manuscript, selected illustrations, and wrote footnotes and explanations.