Artistic features of Jewish women’s breastplates of the traditional Jewish costume of the Eastern Galicia of the nineteenth century

Abstract

This article is devoted to the analysis of the artistic features of Jewish women’s breastplates of the traditional Jewish costume of the Eastern Galicia of the nineteenth century. Were analyzed main compositional schemes, ornamental motifs, and color schemes. The sources of the research were selected products in the “ Spanier Arbeit ”. The technique of metal lace weaving in Sasiv – a town near Zolochiv. Marcus Leib Margulis founded the first workshop in the second third of the nineteenth century. The greatest growth of the workshop falls in the middle of the second half of the nineteenth century when craftsmen create original high-art products: Atars, yarmulkes, women's bibs, and Shabbat caps. Under Margulis’s leadership were developed: ornamental schemes, complex compositions based on plant ornament, and mesh motifs of bad-e-Rumi with modules filled with floral and leaf motifs. The most successful samples were put into mass production. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, hundreds of craftsmen worked in Sasiv, but production gradually decreased. Traditional forms and elements of the Jewish women’s costume of Eastern Galicia were analyzed. It was determined that Jewish women chose costumes typical for all women of the region, and the difference was in decorative elements, in particular, bibs. Breastplates performed a utilitarian function: they covered the cleavage area and allowed us to observe modesty, also a significant decorative element, and a peculiar accent of the costume. The traditional shape of bibs was a significantly elongated rectangle made of precious fabrics: velvet, silk, brocade, and jacquard, decorated with metallic lace, haptic, sequins, and in some cases small pearls on semi-precious stones. The most common in lace were floral ornaments: flowers of roses, peonies, sunflowers, maple leaves, flowerpot motifs, and garlands, as well as ornaments in the form of interwoven harnesses and "peacock eyes”. The article examines the symbolism of certain ornamental motifs in Jewish art. For analysis were selected sights from the collection of the Museum of Ethnography and Artistic Crafts in Lviv, illustrations in publications of the 1930s of the twentieth century.